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SE Asia Chronicles Podcast Transcript #22

 

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Good evening from Southeast Asia. This will be episode or volume number 22.

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Yeah, 22 of the Southeast Asia Chronicle podcast tape recording things.

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And our purpose here is to help you figure out if you're ready to leave the matrix

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in a Western country and change it out for another matrix.

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No, actually, actually, that's not true.

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You come to a Southeast Asian country, there will be some degree of a matrix

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and it'll be a totally different matrix than anything you've ever experienced.

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But it will not be so much of a matrix.

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It will not be the completely 101% fake-o, switch-o, change-o facade life you've got in the Western country.

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It will not be that. It'll be much more real and down to earth.

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There's a downside to that. That means that you've got to wake up.

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You've got to pick up your feet. You've got to watch what the hell you're doing.

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You're not going to be taken care of. You're not going to have your little hand held every inch of the way.

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And you might miss that. Some guys do. Some guys embrace it. I embrace it.

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I mean, I spent years in Canada and Alaska where there was no government, essentially where I was.

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And you just learn. You're living free. And you do what you have to do.

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And you live how you have to live. And you are careful.

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Some guys can't do that. Some people can't do that.

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They get out of the matrix up there in the Western country and they soon realize,

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man, life out here in the real world is kind of cold and kind of scary.

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And it can be, but it's real. It's called reality. Suck it up.

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OK, so if you decide you want to try it, we're going to help you decide where you might try it first.

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And can you afford to try it? Lots of guys dream of it.

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Lots of guys would fit here probably really, really well.

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But they can't afford to even get here, let alone stay here.

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It used to be if you could get here, plane ticket, you know, you get here, then you're pretty much good to go.

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You know, you could live on pretty much anything you wanted or anything you could live on.

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Some guys came here, they didn't have any money to live on.

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They didn't have anything. They didn't have a dollar, didn't have a bot, didn't have a peso.

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But they would find a girl who would take care of them.

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And you can't do that anymore because the matrix is building itself more and more and more and more

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throughout Southeast Asia and all around the world. I see it all around the world.

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The matrix, you know, slowly but inexorably is building.

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It's a little grid, little grid, little grid, little grid, little grid, little grid, little grid, like that.

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Everywhere, through every society, every culture, the matrix is taken over.

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It is replacing humanity. I call it a brain disease.

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I think it is.

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See, the woke politically correct brain disease. It's a disease.

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OK, we're not going there now. That's a whole other rant.

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You want to see me fired up? We'll start talking about woke bullshit.

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OK. Anyway, all tapes, all recordings are copyrighted.

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Copyright 2023 by StockPhotosWorldwide.com. You can go there to get these or you can go to

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RetireSoutheastAsia.com.

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So that's RetireSEAsia.com.

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They'll take you straight to this page where all these things are.

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Or you can go to the RSS feeds. I don't know where they are.

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I just turned on the RSS on this just a week ago, so I don't know who has picked them up yet.

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I see they're busily, busily downloading from our main RSS feed site.

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So they're going somewhere. They're getting disseminated somewhere around the world.

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Those are audio only, no video.

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So, you know, if I make beautiful pictures in the background, you can't see them.

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But whatever.

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Some of them aren't that beautiful. Well, some of them are, yeah.

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Now, we got way off track because everybody keeps writing in after each episode.

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Everybody keeps writing in all the questions. Well, what about this? Well, what about that?

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Well, you weren't clear about this. Well, what did you mean about that?

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And so I had to go back and explain and explain and explain.

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It's gotten pretty tedious.

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So we're on 85 percent of everybody's question has to do with girls.

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I mean, because it's, you know, somewhere around 90, 95 percent of people who come to Thailand, for instance, are guys.

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More girls go to other countries than in Thailand, which is where you could very well try first.

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Well, Philippines, too. There's more girls. There's more Western girls in the Philippines than in Thailand.

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But anyway, the guys majority of questions are about the girls.

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I suppose the girls want to know about the girls, too.

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Most of them aren't old enough to know about the girls in Southeast Asia.

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If they're 53, they're not old enough to know delicate little creatures that they are.

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You know, they think they're worldly. They've been around. They've seen shit.

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No, they ain't seen no shit. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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They haven't. They only think they have.

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OK, so what we're going to do is for this for this episode 22, we are not going to talk about girls hardly at all.

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We're going to cover one particular subject.

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And it's a big, ugly, nasty subject, really far bigger issue than you ever dreamed.

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And it's a bad thing. And so you're going to take this and you're going to stick it under your hat

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with along with all the other stuff that makes you wonder if you want to come to Southeast Asia.

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I have rent houses or condos in most countries.

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It runs pretty much the same, regardless of the country.

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You're going to get fucked.

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They don't have the laws. Even the countries that do have have made kind of a stab at the laws for renters.

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They don't enforce them. There's no way to really enforce them.

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In America, whatever, whatever Western country you get ready access to the courts in America, they've got small claims court.

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It's a snap. You know, it's like thirty five dollars. So they got to show up.

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They can't send their attorney. It's great. I love it.

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I won every small claims court case in America that I've ever filed, probably 20 or 30.

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I had a lot of different businesses.

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I was a landlord in the US. I was a good one.

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And I had trouble with renters. I have trouble as a landlord. I have trouble as a tenant.

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I mean, you're just going to get fucked either way.

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OK, so if you have landed in Thailand or any other country, the pie, the phil Cambodia, Laos, I don't care.

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You're going to be in a hotel for a little while. And then you're going to if you decide you're going to stay there, you're going to start thinking about, well, where can I live?

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Hotels suck. They really suck.

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So you're going to start thinking about a house or a condo.

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Probably at first, not knowing the lay of the land, you're going to opt for a condo or an apartment. You know, it's interchangeable.

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How are you going to do that? What are you going to do? How are you going to find a condo?

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Well, you can look on some really asinine ripoff place like Craigslist or something like that.

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You can go on Facebook. You can look at real estate groups and things like that.

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Those are just shark tanks. They're just full. They're just little bowls full of big sharks.

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And you drop your bait in there and they're just going to go crazy.

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You're going to be swamped and swarmed with offers of every kind.

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First thing you're going to run into is real estate agents who are not really agents.

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Occasionally you run into that in the Western country, but not very often because they have these things called laws.

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And they kind of sort of make a half-hearted attempt to enforce them.

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Southeast Asia, no, they don't. Anybody can be an agent. They can make business cards. They can claim their license to register, you know.

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Here's my agency, you know, which is really their shitty 3000 peso a month room. That's their agency, you know.

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And they're going to fuck you. If there's any possible way on earth, the agent themselves are going to fuck you.

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For whatever they can get, then they're going to disappear.

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Maybe the condo they're showing isn't, they don't even speak for it.

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Maybe they just got a key somewhere and they're showing it to you and they got some fake contracts.

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So that's really on the basic level of being scammed, you know. And all the countries are going to do that.

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You got to be really careful. Try to find who is the actual owner. Try very, very hard to deal with the actual owner, not an agent.

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An agent will fuck you almost every single time. Forget the agents. Just forget them. Just run. Run. Run.

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Have I had any good experiences with agents in any Southeast Asian country in 11 years? No. Not one. Not one.

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Have I had any good experiences with owners, direct owners, in any Southeast Asian country?

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One time comes to mind. Two times. Well, sort of. One and a half times.

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Another half a time. Two times. Out of all the places I live, probably, I don't know, probably 15 places. So two times.

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And we're going to go through these.

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I mentioned my very first room in one of the earlier episodes I told you about my very first room. The owner was a fat Australian piece of shit named Frank.

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Tried to outrageously fuck me over. Almost succeeded. In the end, he didn't. He didn't get one bot. But he tried. Oh God, he tried. He was a Falang. He was a Westerner. He was a white man.

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I learned through all the years and all the rentals.

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Well, I gotta qualify this. I had about 15 rentals in Thailand.

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And a lot of times I had other rentals in other countries at the same time. So how many total? Probably the lower 20s.

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Rooms and condos and homes. Whatever. Shops. Whatever. Lower 20s. 22, 23, 24. Something like that.

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So there's some fair body of experience. And I watched all my friends go through it too. Same shit that I went through. Or worse.

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Okay, so I went through the bullshit with Frank. Big fat. Sex. Pat. Frank. And barely got my money back. Got out of there.

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And then I went to a...

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God. I ended up with a guy.

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A retired New York City real estate agent. And I thought, well, this guy's gonna know the score. He's gonna know what you can do, what you can't do.

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You know. Like that. Jewish guy.

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Name was Jay.

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And I rented one of his rooms.

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The room itself wasn't that bad. And the building itself wasn't that bad either. It had a nice pool. It was okay. It wasn't bad. The problem there was twofold.

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One of the problems was the building was a sex-pat building.

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Okay, there are buildings, especially in Thailand. Well, everywhere. But maybe a little more so in Thailand.

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Where sex-pats get the idea that other sex-pats live there. It's almost like pedophiles hanging out in the same building, you know. It's almost like that. Birds of a flock. Flok. Flok.

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Together. Birds of... No wait. Birds of... Birds of a feather flock together.

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And they're birds of a feather. They are.

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So all day and all night this building was swimming in drunken old 75 year old British ex-sex-pats and their 16, 17, 18 year old poker girls, street girls, bar girls, whatever.

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All day, all night. 24-7. Just running girls. Running girls. All the time.

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These were a very bad, classic girl.

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There were jobs available. They didn't want jobs. They wanted to fuck for money.

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Jesus.

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And that really began to wear on me.

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I wasn't one of them. And it seemed as though they could sense it.

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And the guys in that building looked at me suspiciously like I was the sex police or something. I never spoke to any of them.

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Never said one word to any of them.

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It was just an oddball. It was a Twilight Zone kind of a

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group of people in there. And it was a really, really, really big building. So lots of them in there.

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I watched a situation one day. I watched it play out. My own two beady eyes from a distance of

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100 feet.

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And this exemplified

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the mentality in that building and what went on in that building.

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Okay. Here's the story. A guy was

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standing outside the building, a little ways out, in the parking lot,

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in a little area where there weren't any cars. And he had about four or five friends with him. These were all older sex pets.

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And this one guy had his girl,

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quote unquote, friend, you know, the rental, whatever. I don't know what she was.

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She was standing there with him. They were on their way somewhere and he had gotten stuck talking to these other guys and she didn't understand a word of it hardly.

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And she just standing there looking around, looking around, looking around, you know, just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for it. And she was probably 16, 17.

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And you could tell that every once in a while she would catch a phrase or catch a word.

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Somebody would speak and she'd turn and look at him like, oh yeah, I understood that, you know.

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They weren't talking about anything especially important, just bullshit.

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And this guy,

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he was saying something totally innocuous.

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Not about the girl, not about anything at all.

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And she looked at him like, did I hear that? Yeah, I heard that right. And she turned around.

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So her back was to this circle of guys and she bent over and pulled her pants down.

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Shorts, shorts. So this is, you know, one o'clock in the afternoon, people all over the place, cars coming and going.

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And the guy, the boyfriend guy, he's, you know, late 60s.

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And he just, he got it pretty quickly.

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And he jumped over to her and he said, oh no, no, no, no, he's kind of laughing, you know, like, no, no, no, no, no, you, you'd not understand correct. No, no, no, no, no, I don't want you to do that now, you know, like that.

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And she just pulled her shorts back up and went back to looking around at the birds in the trees.

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And he had her so well trained that on command she would do anything you wanted.

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She was just a robot.

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And she had misunderstood something he had said.

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And acted out the command, the command that she thought was being issued.

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And I suppose after that, you know, he was a little more careful with his phraseology and his speech when he's talking around other people, I don't know.

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But that was, when I saw that I went, oh yeah, okay, yeah, that's, that's this building. Yeah, that's this building.

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That's what it is here.

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And I was about ready to leave by then anyway.

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And I was, I didn't have a bank account at that point.

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And I was carrying large sums of money around.

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In those days, it was really, really hard to get a bank account.

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And his condo was probably the only condo in the whole building that didn't have a safe.

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It was just absurd. And I kept bugging him, bugging him, bugging him saying, Jay, I really need a safe.

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You know, I'm not going to carry around $5,000, $8,000 U.S., you know, places I go.

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You know, I can't, I can't keep doing this. I'm not going to put it under the mattress.

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I'm like, you know, really, I need a safe.

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And finally he relented and he came over with, with his, he was 60s something then.

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And his girlfriend was 20 or 20, I think she was 22.

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And she followed him everywhere, you know, just the same as that little girl down there in the parking lot.

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And he said, okay, he had a little bag of tools and he had some little screws and shit.

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And he said, okay, I'm going to put a safe in for you. I said, okay.

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And he laid his stuff out and then he opened a clothing closet thing that was kind of semi-permeated in there.

193
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:43,000
And he was going to bolt it to the false bottom of that.

194
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And I thought, oh, well, that's, that's stupid. You know, one good yank and that bottom of that thing come right on out, you know.

195
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:57,000
But, you know, I'd gotten him this far and it had taken me months to get him this far. So I figured, okay.

196
00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:04,000
And then I looked at the safe. It was a little tin thing. A screwdriver could have popped the door.

197
00:21:04,000 --> 00:21:11,000
Probably six to ten dollars US for what he paid for that thing.

198
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:17,000
It was absurd. But I figured, okay, I'm probably on the way out here anyway.

199
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:23,000
And just do it. Just put it in, you know, just put it in and get the hell out.

200
00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:32,000
And so he commenced to trying to put it in. He didn't know how to put the bit in the drill to drill the holes.

201
00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:40,000
I did that for him. He didn't know how to open the door of the little safe and mark the holes as to where he was going to drill.

202
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:46,000
So I did that for him. He drilled the holes.

203
00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:54,000
And then he said, well, now what do I do? Now what do I do? And he's really nervous because girlfriend's looking at him like, you know, I can do this.

204
00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:58,000
I'm 22 and I can do this. I'm a girl and you're a fucking moron.

205
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:04,000
And he starts looking to me for some kind of support. And I didn't hate him at that point.

206
00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:08,000
I thought, well, okay, I'll bail him out of this. And I very quietly, I told him every move to make.

207
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:18,000
And the deal was he had to scoop the little clothing closet thing out from the wall so he could get behind it, underneath it.

208
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And then he had to put the safe in there and he had to line up the holes and then he had to drop the bolts down through the holes inside the safe.

209
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:35,000
And he couldn't figure out any of that at all. He couldn't begin to figure that out.

210
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:43,000
So I mostly did that for him, you know, still trying to show him how to do it so he would do it so girlfriend wouldn't dump his ass.

211
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:46,000
Well, she wouldn't anyway because he had money.

212
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:52,000
Turned out in the end she should have.

213
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:57,000
So he dropped the bolts, four bolts, dropped it down, you know, opened the door safe, dropped them down through the holes.

214
00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:01,000
Okay, safe to sit in there, but it's not bolted down at all.

215
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:15,000
And then so he gets some nuts and he reaches around in the back underneath and he finds one bolt and he's trying to thread the nut onto the bolt.

216
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:18,000
Well, the bolt itself is just turning inside the safe.

217
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:23,000
You know, I said, No, no, no, no, Jay, look, look, look, look, it's just turning, you know, you got to hold the top of it, you know.

218
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:26,000
Oh, okay, thank you.

219
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:34,000
And I said, Before you do that, you know, did you get some washers? Yeah, I got some washers. Okay.

220
00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:37,000
He's good. So he put the washers on there.

221
00:23:37,000 --> 00:23:46,000
We got all the nuts and bolts down and tightened down and stood back and he turned to his girlfriend.

222
00:23:46,000 --> 00:23:49,000
He said, See, I told you I could do it.

223
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,000
And she just rolled her eyes, looked at me.

224
00:23:52,000 --> 00:24:02,000
Jesus Christ. Anyway, so that's part of what you're going to deal with with landlords in these Southeast Asian countries, even the Yanks.

225
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:11,000
The indigenous people are going to be much worse, much worse, far, far worse than that.

226
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:17,000
They cannot do anything at all. They cannot do one thing. They cannot change a light bulb. I mean that literally.

227
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:26,000
The the phalangs, the Western guys maybe can change a light bulb. That's maybe, maybe you got to show them, you know.

228
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:30,000
You know, how many guys does it take to change a light bulb, you know?

229
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:37,000
So shortly after that, I gave him notice, moved out.

230
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:41,000
And I wanted to get away from him.

231
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:45,000
But of course, he had this amazing deal across town.

232
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:48,000
It was a nice one bedroom.

233
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:53,000
It was all crappy, but the layout was just really sweet, really nice.

234
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:56,000
Had a nice, well, had an OK view.

235
00:24:56,000 --> 00:25:00,000
It was in a really good position in the building, end of the hall, corner unit, you know, like that.

236
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,000
Nobody living around it.

237
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:06,000
Pretty much the same price.

238
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:11,000
And it was not a sex pat building. It was kind of a sort of normal building.

239
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:15,000
There were a lot of phalangs in there, but it wasn't like that other one.

240
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:20,000
It wasn't like a house of dolls, you know.

241
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:22,000
Man.

242
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:27,000
And so I said, OK, let's do six months. OK, I'll try it out. Six months.

243
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:39,000
And after about three months, it became apparent that the, well, it was on an entertainment soy.

244
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:46,000
So it was loud and I knew that going in, it's fine. That's OK. Close the window.

245
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:56,000
But there was one bar, one bar in the soy that was 10 times louder than every other bar.

246
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:01,000
All the surrounding bars hated this bar because their customers couldn't even hear themselves.

247
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:08,000
They couldn't even have a conversation in their bar. Maybe 60, 80, maybe 100 feet away.

248
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:15,000
And they were pissed. And they were always over at this one bar threatening this guy.

249
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:20,000
Look, you've got to turn this down. You've got to. We cannot keep our customers.

250
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:24,000
We don't have any customers. Look around your bar. You don't have one. We have two.

251
00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:26,000
We'd like to keep those two, you know.

252
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:33,000
Can you grasp this? And in his rotten British accent, now, fuck you, get out, get out.

253
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:38,000
Yeah, you know, I wish I could do that accent. It's a particular British accent.

254
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:44,000
And the Brits, I have no doubt, the real Brits, I'm positive they know what accent I'm talking about.

255
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:47,000
And I wish I don't even know the name of it. People have told me and I've forgotten.

256
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:57,000
It's a particular British accent. It denotes that you come from the bottom of the septic tank in England.

257
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:00,000
And that's the accent this guy had.

258
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:10,000
Anyway, his bar was so loud that from about 6.30 p.m. on, you couldn't watch your own TV.

259
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:19,000
You couldn't talk on your own phone. You couldn't talk to each other sitting on the couch.

260
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:22,000
You couldn't do anything. Sleep was absolutely out of the question.

261
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:27,000
And he would run until four, five, six in the morning.

262
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:31,000
There was just no way you could deal with it. You just couldn't.

263
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:35,000
And so I went to Jay and explained it to him and he came over a couple of times and he said,

264
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:40,000
Oh God, you're right. You know, that's really, really, really, really over the top.

265
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:46,000
And he said, Well, what can he do? Because he wants to keep me as a renter.

266
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:52,000
I said, Okay, okay. You've got to put in double pane glass.

267
00:27:52,000 --> 00:28:03,000
Now, I don't know if that'll help it. I don't know if that'll cure it. I don't know if that'll mute it down to the point where where this room is livable.

268
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:11,000
If you want to be more sure, put in triple pane, because the whole front of this condo, two rooms,

269
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:18,000
well, let's say three rooms, this condo faced that soy right where this bar was.

270
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:22,000
So you had to do the whole front of the condo. You couldn't do just one room.

271
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:37,000
And there was probably a total of six, six or seven big, big sliding windows.

272
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:43,000
And so that was a conversation we had. I said, Look, if you want me to even try this for longer,

273
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:49,000
you're going to have to mute that noise down. Double pane might maybe do it.

274
00:28:49,000 --> 00:29:01,000
Triple pane has a better chance of doing it. You know, and I just explained this in the minutest detail to him.

275
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:08,000
Ah, geez. So he thought about for a while. He thought about for another month because he's a cheap son of a bitch.

276
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:12,000
He wouldn't fix anything. He just everything that broke in your eye to fix it.

277
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:21,000
I remember the washing machine quit one day and he came over to fix it.

278
00:29:21,000 --> 00:29:32,000
And the he turned it outside. The little water pump was translucent plastic, like a Tupperware of plastic, kind of only much thicker.

279
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:36,000
And you could see that there was a coin trapped in the water pump.

280
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:46,000
Silverish, you know, old looking kind of coin. And all you had to do is pop about four or five screws, pop the bottom of the water pump off

281
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:52,000
and take that coin out, put it back on and then see if it worked, which it probably probably wouldn't.

282
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:56,000
But he saw that coin. I pointed it out to him. He saw the coin.

283
00:29:56,000 --> 00:30:04,000
Instantly, he's on my ass, swearing, accusatory. Did you put that coin in there? Did you put that coin in there? Did you do that?

284
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:09,000
Why did you do that? Why did you put that coin in there? And he's getting more and more wound up.

285
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:14,000
And I was right on the point of telling him, get out, just get the hell out. You're a rude son of a bitch. Get out.

286
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:18,000
Just get the hell out. I'll fix it myself. Get out. You know, I was right at that point.

287
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:24,000
And his girlfriend was there thinking probably the same thing. Just a jackass.

288
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:30,000
And so he couldn't get the water pump off because he apparently never held a screwdriver in his life.

289
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:37,000
So I did that. Popped it open. There's the coin. It's a thousand years old. You know, it's 30% worn away.

290
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:42,000
It had been in there since the day he probably that he bought that stupid machine.

291
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:47,000
And I held it up and I said, now, Jay, do you think I did this?

292
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:56,000
Well, I don't know. Looks kind of old, doesn't it? You know, that's the kind of flamin' jackass he was.

293
00:30:56,000 --> 00:31:01,000
So we put that back together and it worked fine. Didn't need any parts. Didn't need anything.

294
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:13,000
But back to these windows. He finally decided, OK, because he realized he couldn't rent it to anybody else until he solved this problem.

295
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:19,000
The Brit son of a bitch bar owner down there had been there for years and was going to be there for another years.

296
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:24,000
And there is no... all the other bars had tried to shut him down, shut him up, and he wouldn't.

297
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:29,000
And, you know, there's just no point. There's nothing you could do. There's no noise laws enforceable in Thailand.

298
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:39,000
Try it. Get there. Try it. See what happens. Try it. I dare you. Try it. Try it.

299
00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:42,000
You'll end up with stories just like this.

300
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:58,000
So Jay goes to the hardware store, to the window store, and he buys a whole set of windows, measured to fit the tracks.

301
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:04,000
Whole set. Has them delivered. Guy's carrying them up.

302
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:13,000
And it should have been a matter of just lifting the old ones out. Not even a tool. Just lift the old ones out. Lift the new ones in.

303
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:23,000
Should have been it. And we started to do that. Oops. Lo and behold, the track styles were completely different.

304
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:28,000
And I was like, Jay, did you not check these? Did you not take some pictures?

305
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:38,000
Well, yeah, I did. But, you know, they look kind of the same.

306
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:45,000
And there was a really, really good deal on these windows, you know. I just couldn't pass them up. I had to buy them.

307
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:49,000
Jay, okay. Okay. Take them back. Get a refund. Get the right windows.

308
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:54,000
And he tried. And in Thailand, there are virtually no refunds. They virtually don't exist.

309
00:32:54,000 --> 00:33:02,000
It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's not going to happen.

310
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:06,000
Most countries, Southeast Asia is like that.

311
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:12,000
The Philippines is a little better in the richer areas. Not out in the provinces.

312
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:16,000
Sale's a sale. A deal is a deal. Don't come back.

313
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:22,000
And they don't realize that, okay, you won't. You know, they don't get that part of it.

314
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,000
So anyway, he went back, took all the windows back, and no refund.

315
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:32,000
And the guy says, well, you know, I do have this whole frame. I have this whole frame set.

316
00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:38,000
You know, it's kind of sort of the same size as the old ones, you know. But they'll fit the windows. Look, look, they slide right back and forth.

317
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:50,000
Well, it turns out these were some Morphidite off-brand windows and frames that wouldn't fit anything else. Only their brand.

318
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,000
And that's why the deal was so good. The guy knew that. He probably had never been able to sell them.

319
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:58,000
And he wanted to get them the hell out of there. So that's why Jay got the good deal.

320
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:04,000
So anyway, then Jay had to buy all new frames. All new frames.

321
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:09,000
He's already got the windows. He can't get rid of them. So he's got to buy all new frames.

322
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:15,000
So he did. Probably got raped on that because the guy knew he had to have those frames and no other frames.

323
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:21,000
I'm sure he got screwed on that. And he told me the price once. It was absurd. It was absurd.

324
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:30,000
Thousands of dollars. Tied prices. I mean, USD, but you know.

325
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:37,000
So he gets all that crap up there. We had to move all the furniture over to other parts of other rooms.

326
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:48,000
And he brought in a crew of four guys. Four tie guys. And all of the frames that had been there since the building was built.

327
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:57,000
You know, probably 20, 30 years. These are all concrete buildings. And so everything's, you know, embedded into the concrete.

328
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:03,000
And it is not easily coming out. So.

329
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:11,000
It took these guys. Four guys. It took them over a week to get all the windows out.

330
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:17,000
And they wouldn't take out one, replace it, take out one, replace it. No, they all had to come out.

331
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:23,000
So then we've got the whole side of this condo is just gaping open to the weather.

332
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:30,000
So the aircon's aren't going to work. And, you know, when it rains, the rain's going to come in.

333
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:34,000
You know, it was a lot of fun. So over a week, maybe 10 days to get these windows out.

334
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:40,000
Because they, you know, they work like tortoises, you know.

335
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:45,000
When they work at all. You know, you'd go and you'd come back and they're sleeping.

336
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:53,000
You'd go and you'd come back and they weren't there at all. You know, you'd go and you'd come back and they're sitting, eating and they're having a talk.

337
00:35:53,000 --> 00:36:03,000
You know, and when they do work, they work just so like a sloth. You know, you know what a sloth is? They're like a sloth.

338
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:11,000
And they screw up everything they touch. Maybe they need to install 10 screws.

339
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:18,000
And the box of screws is on the other side of the condo. So they walk over and get one screw.

340
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:24,000
And they walk back to the window and it takes them 10 minutes to screw that thing in, you know.

341
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:32,000
And then they got to walk to the other end of the condo, get another screw. You know, everything they do, that's how they work.

342
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:36,000
I don't know why. I have theories, you know, I'm not going to go there now.

343
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:42,000
So anyway, it took them maybe as much as 10 days to get all these windows out.

344
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:48,000
And then began the process of putting the new ones in. And that took the same amount of time.

345
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:56,000
They had to grind down all of the concrete to get the new ones to fit.

346
00:36:56,000 --> 00:37:04,000
Broken off screws everywhere. They had to grind those off. And that was a horrible ordeal for them because they didn't know how to do that.

347
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:13,000
You know, normally in the US this would have been... a good crew could do it in one day.

348
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:18,000
A mediocre crew could do it in two days.

349
00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:27,000
But we finally got these things in after two weeks or a few days, a few days more. Maybe 16, 17 days.

350
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:34,000
Of course all that time then the bar noise down there was really bad. Really wild because there's no windows.

351
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:43,000
So they get them all done and they, you know, cleaned up as well as workers in Southeast Asia clean up.

352
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:50,000
And they're done, they're gone. Jay paid them a huge amount of money. Huge.

353
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:58,000
And I thought, well, okay, that's something. You know, Jay did this. So let's give him a fair shot at this.

354
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:06,000
You know, let's see how much this knocks down the noise and see if there's any possible way on earth I can live with it.

355
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:10,000
You know, you don't have to sleep eight hours. You know, five is enough, right? Okay.

356
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:20,000
So first night, raucous. Really loud. Just as loud as it ever was.

357
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:26,000
And I thought, what the hell? What the hell? What the hell?

358
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:32,000
And in the morning I didn't really think about it. I thought, God, what the hell? What's going on here?

359
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:39,000
Maybe last night was just overly loud, you know, something like that. Next night, same thing.

360
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:46,000
And after those two nights, I called Jay and said, Jay, you need to come over. We need to talk.

361
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:54,000
And so he bops in. He's all happy-go-lucky. Oh, really, really fixed it for you, didn't I? Didn't I? Oh, man, am I a good landlord or what?

362
00:38:54,000 --> 00:39:00,000
You know, I said, Jay, there's no difference whatsoever. There's no difference at all.

363
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:06,000
And so he's like, well, that can't be that. You're making this up. You're lying to me. Why are you lying to me?

364
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:14,000
He's lying to me, you know. Jesus. I had never been around Jewish people before.

365
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:20,000
Wow. What an education that was.

366
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:25,000
And I said, okay, Jay, you know, about nine, ten o'clock tonight, you come back and you listen to it. You tell me.

367
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:31,000
So he did. He came back listening to it. And it's just as raucous as it ever was.

368
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:37,000
There's no way anybody could sleep at all. There's no way. Turn the TV on up loud.

369
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:43,000
You can't even hear it. You just hear some mumbling in the background with the rock and roll going on.

370
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:51,000
And I said, Jay, I don't know what the hell is going on here, but this has not helped at all.

371
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:58,000
I said, are these...did you get double or triple pain?

372
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:03,000
And he's like, well, I don't know, really. And he's kind of looking at the floor.

373
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:09,000
And I knew that look by then. And I thought, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, what has he done?

374
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:19,000
And I got a flashlight and got the angle just right so I could see through the glass to make sure I was in a position to count all the pains.

375
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:24,000
Oh, they were single pain.

376
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:29,000
He had dripped out single pain, replaced them with single pain.

377
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:47,000
I said, Jay, why? Why? Why did you do that? He said, well, they were really cheap.

378
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:51,000
What can you even say to that? You know, outside of just punching him in the face.

379
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:56,000
What can you even say to somebody that freaking stupid?

380
00:40:56,000 --> 00:41:01,000
That's what it was. They were just sheer and rank stupidity.

381
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:10,000
He was one of these guys that had a real habit of getting T-boned in intersections because he would run lights and stop signs.

382
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:14,000
Stupid. Stupid is how stupid it is.

383
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:18,000
And I gave him notice on the spot.

384
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:25,000
And a week or 10 days later, I had found a nice place and I started moving my stuff.

385
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:39,000
Now, it so happened that I paid the electric bill on the first.

386
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:46,000
And then I moved out for three more days. I was moving all day every day, staying at the other place.

387
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:49,000
So no aircon running, no nothing.

388
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:58,000
Now, normally the electric bill at that place would have been, I think at that time, it was around like four or five thousand baht.

389
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:06,000
No, no, no, it wasn't even that. It's like 35 to 3800 baht per month. That's what it was.

390
00:42:06,000 --> 00:42:19,000
Yeah. With aircon, with one, two, three aircons going full time and cooking and everything, you know, TV 24-7 and whatever.

391
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:29,000
So for a month, so figure a little more than 100 baht a day.

392
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:38,000
Let's say 100 and whatever that calculates out to, you know, pro-rate at 30, you know, 3500 baht pro-rate by 30.

393
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,000
So a little more than 100 baht a day for electric.

394
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:48,000
And I paid the electric, so it's done fresh.

395
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:56,000
And then I had three more days that I had to move out in and I was moving, not in the condo, not staying there, not anything.

396
00:42:56,000 --> 00:43:03,000
And I got all moved out, done, paid to have it cleaned, professionally cleaned.

397
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:12,000
I do that. I thought I was a landlord before and I can't leave shit like that. I do it. I really do it.

398
00:43:12,000 --> 00:43:23,000
So it was ready. It was ready for his next sucker, you know, slash tenant, slash sucker, slash fool, you know.

399
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:28,000
And he would lie to him and tell him, well, you know, there's a little bit of bar noise down there.

400
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:31,000
Is that going to bother you? Oh, no, no. OK, sign here. Sign here.

401
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:36,000
I'd like to have two years, please. You know, like that's that's how the next tenant was going to go.

402
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:52,000
God. And after I get moved out, a day or two later, he sent me a message saying, OK, the my share of the electric for the three days after the first was 2800.

403
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:58,000
But. Which is just a tiny bit less than what it would have been for the month.

404
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:14,000
OK, so I had, you know, on top of his list of attributes like dumbass, idiot, fool, obnoxious, arrogant shit.

405
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:20,000
On top of all that, I had to add scammer.

406
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:25,000
Oh, God, I didn't even reply to him. I just blocked him.

407
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:35,000
You know, my my share of it should have been maybe 300 bucks, maybe 300.

408
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:39,000
You know, nine bucks, about like that.

409
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:45,000
For the three days that I wasn't even there, probably more like half of that.

410
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:51,000
I would, you know, just to get him gone, I would have been happy with 10 bucks.

411
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:56,000
And that was it. I blocked him. Never talked to him again.

412
00:44:56,000 --> 00:45:01,000
So I'm around a few times. I turned my head so hopefully he wouldn't recognize me.

413
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:06,000
They'd walk by with his girlfriend and girlfriend would look and smile.

414
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:16,000
And she was always quite friendly, quite friendly, overly, you know, hitting.

415
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:23,000
Through the grapevine, I heard that he well, he always boasted to me about how he cheated on her all the time.

416
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:33,000
Once a week he had to go, had to go to the bar, get a short time girl, you know.

417
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:41,000
Just a sex pet, just a miserable, stinking, foolish, old sex pet with lots of money.

418
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:46,000
He owned, I don't know, 20 or 30 properties around that area.

419
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:55,000
And I never met any of his tenants who liked him. But anyway.

420
00:45:55,000 --> 00:46:00,000
She finally figured out what he was, I guess, I presume.

421
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:09,000
And she demanded that he either buy six condos and put him in her name or she was done gone, she's out.

422
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:15,000
And cheap sucker or smart sucker that he was.

423
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:21,000
He wouldn't buy the condos and so she went and found some friend of his, some German guy.

424
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:28,000
And had been fucking him for a while. And then Jay found out about that.

425
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:35,000
And that was a big blow up. And he said, OK, you can stay, but don't do it again.

426
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:47,000
And of course she didn't even slow down. And a few months later, the German guy came, took her to Germany, married her.

427
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:52,000
OK, so that was my last contact with Jay.

428
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:59,000
All right, so I moved into a really nice condo.

429
00:46:59,000 --> 00:47:07,000
Really huge condo, really beautiful condo. It's really expensive by Thai standards.

430
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:14,000
It was marked at 50,000 baht. Got him down to 35.

431
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:22,000
And that's another thing for you guys to remember. All rents in all Southeast Asian countries are highly negotiable.

432
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:29,000
Do not pay face value. Do not ever do it. In America, pretty much you've got to pay face value.

433
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:35,000
Maybe you could wiggle around a little tiny bit. But in Southeast Asia, you can wiggle around a lot.

434
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:45,000
You know, maybe even 50 percent, maybe even more than that. Hit them with what you think you want to pay.

435
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:50,000
They say no, then you go up. You know, it's called haggling.

436
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:55,000
Westerners don't like to do it. I don't like to do it. But I sure as hell learn to do it here.

437
00:47:55,000 --> 00:48:03,000
Now I do it all the time. It's just second nature. You just do it. You just do it.

438
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:09,000
Don't be the Chinese, you know, that haggle over the price of a pack of gum in 7-Eleven for God's sake.

439
00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:17,000
So I moved into this other really, really, really top-end condo.

440
00:48:17,000 --> 00:48:23,000
God, it cost me a lot of money to get in there.

441
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:29,000
Several months deposited and on and on like that. And so I got in, got the contract, got in.

442
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:33,000
Got moved in, started putting stuff away. And then I started going around flicking on TVs.

443
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:43,000
There was like one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, or five. I think five TVs.

444
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:48,000
And I went around flicking them on. Not a single one worked. They were all just toast. They were all just crap.

445
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:54,000
They didn't work. They were toast. And then I found all kinds of things that didn't work.

446
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:59,000
Like the spa out on the deck. That didn't work at all. And it just went on and on.

447
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:05,000
I ended up making this huge long list of things that should have worked, that I should have checked, you know.

448
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:12,000
But in high-end, room like that, you know, you think, well, you shouldn't have to check this stuff.

449
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:17,000
And the guy...

450
00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:24,000
The landlord, it was two guys, it was two British guys, father and son.

451
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:29,000
The son had seemed OK to me. I dealt with him a little bit. I went out with him.

452
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:38,000
Messing around a few times. He seemed OK. He was a wret, you know, but he didn't have that dumb ass goddamn accent, whatever that accent is.

453
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:43,000
I'll have to Google that thing so maybe I can tell you what it is and you can listen to some examples of it.

454
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:47,000
And when you hear it, you just run the other way. You just get the hell away from them.

455
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:52,000
Because they're the slobs of the earth. But anyway, these two guys...

456
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:55,000
Seemed OK. They just seemed OK.

457
00:49:55,000 --> 00:50:03,000
So I was dealing with the son in the beginning and I made up this list of stuff like, well, you know, not a single TV works and half the hot water heaters don't work.

458
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:09,000
And this doesn't work and the spa doesn't work and, you know, the light switches don't work.

459
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:15,000
It was a long, long, long list. Washing machine doesn't work in one of the rooms, you know.

460
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:17,000
God, it was terrible.

461
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:21,000
Drains were plugged. You know, it just went on and on.

462
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:25,000
And I emailed that list over to this guy.

463
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:30,000
And he wrote back with this fiery bullshit.

464
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:39,000
Why would you lie? You liar, you piece of shit. You lie about everything.

465
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:44,000
Really? Come and say that in person, you fucking piece of shit.

466
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:47,000
Fucking Brit piece of shit. Come and say that in person.

467
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:50,000
I'll move the furniture out of the way, motherfucker.

468
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:54,000
Come on. Now. I'm waiting. Come now.

469
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:59,000
And he wouldn't, because Brits won't.

470
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,000
Son of a bitch.

471
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:03,000
I told him what I thought of him.

472
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:07,000
And then I gave the list to his dad.

473
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:12,000
His dad came over and tested everything. He's like, oh, geez. Oh, geez. I'm really sorry about this.

474
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:21,000
I had no idea. My son's been managing this. I don't know what the hell. What the hell is going on?

475
00:51:21,000 --> 00:51:27,000
Man, I will have everything in here fixed in about 72 hours. Don't you even think about it.

476
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:30,000
I'm really sorry this happened.

477
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:35,000
And I just said, keep your goddamn son away from here, because I'll hurt him if he fucking shows up.

478
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:39,000
It doesn't do all fucking hurting. I'll do my very fucking best to hurt him.

479
00:51:39,000 --> 00:51:43,000
Piece of shit. And he said, OK, got it. Noted.

480
00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:48,000
And the son never heard from the son again.

481
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:55,000
I stayed in that place for a year.

482
00:51:55,000 --> 00:52:01,000
I had to replace all kinds of appliances and stuff, but that was all in the contract that he had to pay for.

483
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:09,000
So it was a pain in the ass. It was inconvenient. But, you know, shit happens when you're dealing with nothing but Chinese appliances.

484
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:13,000
They're all going to go out. Every single one of them, they're going to go out again and again and again and again.

485
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:19,000
Yeah, they're cheap. Oh, my God, they're cheap. But you're lucky to get a few months out of them. Really, truly.

486
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:26,000
You got to order stuff made in America, made in Japan, made in Germany, period.

487
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:30,000
To some degree, Australia.

488
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:37,000
And it's going to cost you a fortune to get them through customs, because customs doesn't want you to buy any of that stuff.

489
00:52:37,000 --> 00:52:48,000
They only want you to buy Chinese stuff because they get all these little wink wink deals with Chinese sellers.

490
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:55,000
Oh, God. OK, so in that place, I had a couple of very serious noise issues.

491
00:52:55,000 --> 00:53:05,000
The staff, all girls, would have parties in the condo next door. These were like a penthouse condos.

492
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:17,000
And the staff would have parties in the condo next door with this old guy, about 70, old fat guy, another Brit.

493
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:25,000
Oh, another Brit. And they would have like sex parties over there.

494
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:32,000
Where everybody's thumping around and moaning and wailing.

495
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:36,000
As far as I ever knew, he was the only guy. He must have been one hell of a stud, I don't know.

496
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:40,000
Or he had a lot of toys, one or the other.

497
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:48,000
And we'd bang on the wall. I had some girlfriends who would stay there sometimes with kids and stuff, and they didn't want to hear that shit.

498
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:52,000
It was louder than the TV.

499
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:57,000
And I would bang on the walls, and sometimes it would quiet down, sometimes it wouldn't.

500
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:07,000
One time, it was really raucous. And I went over there with my cell phone, held up my cell phone, got it recording.

501
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:10,000
I was going to bang on his door, but it was actually cracked, and I pushed it open.

502
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:14,000
And there they all were, and who was in the middle? The manager of the building.

503
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:17,000
Thai lady.

504
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:21,000
Just moaning and...

505
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:27,000
Moaning and humping, fast as she could.

506
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:29,000
Okay.

507
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:31,000
So that was about to get me out.

508
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:39,000
And then we had a building adjacent to us that was a really tall building.

509
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:45,000
And it was built like a chimney. It was a weird design. Some of the buildings, they're...

510
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:49,000
They're open all through the center, all the way to the sky.

511
00:54:49,000 --> 00:55:00,000
And then if you stand on the ground floor in the center, you look up and you can see all the condo doors open into that center area.

512
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:07,000
And I don't know, I... whatever, you know, people like what they like, I don't know, whatever.

513
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:13,000
The problem was that it was a huge echo chamber. And the building...

514
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:21,000
The tenancy was really down, as it often is in Thailand. Don't let them fool you. It's a renter's market.

515
00:55:21,000 --> 00:55:24,000
It's really a renter's market.

516
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:33,000
And so the management of that building, the Thais, would bring in these big karaoke setups every single night.

517
00:55:33,000 --> 00:55:41,000
And they would set them up in the center of this open area, this chimney, bottom of the chimney, in the center.

518
00:55:41,000 --> 00:55:47,000
And they would just blast out karaoke. I never saw more...

519
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:54,000
The most people I ever saw at the karaoke thing was one person singing, which I think the staff had hired.

520
00:55:54,000 --> 00:56:00,000
And then there was a mom and her little daughter. And they stood there for a few minutes. That was it. That's all there was.

521
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:06,000
But it didn't matter because they had that music blasting. And it would go till 5, 6 in the morning.

522
00:56:06,000 --> 00:56:12,000
And the staff, I think they thought, Thais think that they can solve everything with...

523
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:19,000
Louder, louder, louder. Kind of like Brits.

524
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:31,000
And they thought that that would attract tenants, I guess, or something, or make the tenants in the building so happy that they wouldn't leave, or something like that.

525
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:35,000
But all it did was drive them out because nobody could sleep.

526
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:44,000
And I went over several times and talked to the Thai staff over there and said, look, you know, I live 80 yards from you and I cannot sleep.

527
00:56:44,000 --> 00:56:51,000
This is ridiculous. I know people living in your building. They hate you. Why are you doing this?

528
00:56:51,000 --> 00:57:00,000
Oh, no, everybody loved it. Oh, yeah, we are very happy people. You're... Oh, fuck, how stupid you think I am.

529
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:10,000
And so those two things together combined with some other problems just made me bail. Contract was up. I left.

530
00:57:10,000 --> 00:57:24,000
The father, the actual owner, a Brit with a real British accent, came over to do the final walkthrough.

531
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:29,000
And he said he couldn't believe how clean it was. He'd never seen it that clean in all years he had owned it.

532
00:57:29,000 --> 00:57:36,000
And he had the cash deposit in his pocket. Done deal. We shook hands. I wished him good luck.

533
00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:43,000
He wished me good luck. If you ever need a condo, you let me know. You can just walk in. Anything you want, you walk in.

534
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:50,000
I said, OK, thanks. I'll remember that. About four or five months later, he was dead from cancer.

535
00:57:50,000 --> 00:58:05,000
So that was a good and a bad. You know, that was a mix. That was the story of the two Brits, neither of which had that rotten accent.

536
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:15,000
One was a really first class good guy. The other was a really first class piece of worthless fucking rotting puss shit.

537
00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:24,000
God damn it. I probably hated that fella more than any other I ever met anywhere in Southeast Asia.

538
00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:34,000
I think. I can't think of any more I hated more than that. What a son of a bitch. Who the fucking fuck did he think he was?

539
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:42,000
But you're going to run into those a lot, a lot, because they know in Southeast Asia there's no laws. You can't touch him.

540
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:48,000
There's nothing you can do. Either somebody, either landlord is going to be a good human being or they're not.

541
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:54,000
And if they're not, you're fucked. There's nothing you can do. There's no way you're going to force them to be good.

542
00:58:54,000 --> 00:59:03,000
So really, you need to know them for about three or four or five months and go out with them and really get to know them before you rent from them, you know,

543
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:11,000
because they can make your life a goddamn living hell. Ideally, you never get into a lease that's more than three months until you've renewed it once or twice.

544
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:20,000
And you think, OK, now you see what all the problems are. OK, I can stay here. No, I can't stay here, you know.

545
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:31,000
Increasingly, they all want first and last and deposit equal to two months rent. That fucking horseshit. It's bullshit.

546
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:36,000
I never asked for that one time in all years I've rented in the US.

547
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:45,000
You give them one month and one deposit. If they don't like it, you fucking walk. And chances are they'll say, OK, OK, OK.

548
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:53,000
But if they won't say OK, then you fucking walk. You get out of there because it's really rare you're going to get your deposit back ever.

549
00:59:53,000 --> 01:00:02,000
Really rare. In any of the countries. So you got two months deposit in there. So you're paying a thousand bucks a month.

550
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:11,000
They got they got two grand USD. And you move out, you leave it clean, you move out on time.

551
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:17,000
And the deposit just isn't ever going to find its way to you.

552
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:21,000
Nothing you can do. There's no small claims court. There's no nothing. You can't sue them.

553
01:00:21,000 --> 01:00:31,000
Especially if they're Thai. It almost doesn't matter if they're Thai. If they have money, you can't sue them.

554
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:36,000
Jesus Christ.

555
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:43,000
I lived for a while in a little house with the German owner next door. I told you how that ended.

556
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:52,000
I lost the deposit on that because there was a dust mark following a lamp cord along the wall.

557
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:59,000
And I started to wipe it off with my thumb and he said, No, no, no, must must repaint entire condo.

558
01:00:59,000 --> 01:01:12,000
Okay. I moved into a huge mansion. God, it was stunning. Big, huge white pillars in the front and a five bedroom.

559
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:26,000
Geez, it was beautiful. Beautiful home. Hardwood and furnished and in a nice villager subdivision.

560
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:31,000
Beautiful in every way. Banana trees everywhere. Like that.

561
01:01:31,000 --> 01:01:41,000
There was a Chinese man and his son. The old man was just filthy rich. Filthy rich. He had probably 15 homes just like that in that village.

562
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:46,000
Didn't have anybody in him. He just enjoyed building them.

563
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:54,000
So it was full of his vacant homes with nobody living in there. I don't know if he tried to rent them out or not. I think he cared.

564
01:01:54,000 --> 01:02:00,000
He would stay a week in one, stay a week in another. You know, they were all within blocks of him.

565
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:05,000
He was a nice enough guy and the son handled the transaction. He was a nice enough guy.

566
01:02:05,000 --> 01:02:12,000
We went along in that thing for a while and it was the same old story. Nothing had been maintained. Nothing worked correctly.

567
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:24,000
I had to spend hours almost every day fixing stuff that broke because it was stupidly put together.

568
01:02:24,000 --> 01:02:34,000
Jesus, from wiring to plumbing to everything. Just crap.

569
01:02:34,000 --> 01:02:44,000
We stayed there for a while and then one day the water bill was probably $150 a month. So what is it? $5 a month.

570
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:49,000
Sometimes $5.50, sometimes $4.50 like that.

571
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:58,000
We had a lot of vegetation out and around it and we watered that stuff all the time. Palm trees and stuff like that.

572
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:05,000
One month the electric bill comes and it's like eight or nine thousand baht. With it all, no, no, no, no, no, no.

573
01:03:05,000 --> 01:03:11,000
Mistake, mistake, mistake. We called the water company out and they tested the meter. No, it's accurate.

574
01:03:11,000 --> 01:03:16,000
And it was. It turned out it was.

575
01:03:16,000 --> 01:03:20,000
So we went hunting. You know, where's the leak? Where's the leak?

576
01:03:20,000 --> 01:03:29,000
We're trying to track down their ridiculous plumbing piping system under the ground, under the concrete driveway, under the house.

577
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:35,000
You know, it goes here, it goes there. There's no rhyme or reason to it at all. It's just spaghetti.

578
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:40,000
And we couldn't find it. We went for several days and we couldn't find the problem.

579
01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:49,000
We could shut the meter off and it would stop. Turn it back on. It's just spinning.

580
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:54,000
Couldn't find it. We just couldn't find anything. We called other people in. They couldn't find anything.

581
01:03:54,000 --> 01:03:57,000
We went like that for several days.

582
01:03:57,000 --> 01:04:01,000
And finally, the owner couldn't find it. The son couldn't find it.

583
01:04:01,000 --> 01:04:08,000
Their construction crew, because they owned some high rises and they had a dedicated construction crew that worked for them 24-7.

584
01:04:08,000 --> 01:04:13,000
They couldn't find the leak. We thought, oh my God, this is well, you know, I don't care.

585
01:04:13,000 --> 01:04:18,000
This is your home. You know, you're going to have to find it because I'm not paying this.

586
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:27,000
And they're like, yeah, you are. Yeah, you're paying this. This is your water bill. You're paying it.

587
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:32,000
I said, OK, you find you find me the leak and then you tell me somehow that's my fault.

588
01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:44,000
OK, we did find it under the house in the crawlspace under the house. It was in the very center of the house.

589
01:04:44,000 --> 01:04:53,000
What happened was they had a piece of half inch PVC running under the house.

590
01:04:53,000 --> 01:04:58,000
And then that length ended and they had a collar. They glued collar on.

591
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:09,000
And then on the other side of the collar, they glued another piece of half inch PVC and ran it to the rest of the way to well, to to to power all the plumbing in the house.

592
01:05:09,000 --> 01:05:18,000
That was the main pipe coming in. And that thing was broken wide open and just ran all the time, all the time, all the time. Never stop.

593
01:05:18,000 --> 01:05:22,000
And so we we called somebody in and they crawled under there and they fixed it. It was easy.

594
01:05:22,000 --> 01:05:31,000
You know, it's like a dollar fix. And they brought out the parts.

595
01:05:31,000 --> 01:05:40,000
And the collar had been glued on to to the one pipe properly, you know, in our far it goes three quarters of an inch or something like that.

596
01:05:40,000 --> 01:05:53,000
You know, whatever like that. Normal. The other piece of pipe, the connecting piece of pipe had gone into the other side of the collar by no more than quarter of an inch.

597
01:05:53,000 --> 01:06:02,000
And that's how they glued it. Because that's what Southeast Asian workers do.

598
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:07,000
And it had lasted, I don't know, quite a few years, I suppose.

599
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:16,000
And then it just chose that moment to break. Now, there's no way or no way, shape or form on Earth that that was our fault.

600
01:06:16,000 --> 01:06:24,000
There's no court in any land except Southeast Asia that would rule that our fault that we were liable for that.

601
01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:29,000
There's not going to happen. It's so blatantly, clearly not our fault.

602
01:06:29,000 --> 01:06:37,000
But it was our fault. We had to pay the water bill and we had to pay the repair.

603
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:45,000
We had another deal in that house where the had these huge antique air conditioners, huge, monstrous things.

604
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:51,000
You ever watch the old Bundy series? Remember that Al brought in that air conditioner.

605
01:06:51,000 --> 01:06:56,000
It's really hot in Chicago and the brand on it was Der Friesen Der Heine.

606
01:06:56,000 --> 01:07:00,000
I know, it was like the size of a mini there or something.

607
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:09,000
Well, that's what they had in this house. They're cheap. Chinese brand. God.

608
01:07:09,000 --> 01:07:18,000
And I had a big work table there with a bunch of computers on it and all kinds of stuff and

609
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:25,000
big TV projector and just everything. Just thousands of dollars worth of stuff on this table.

610
01:07:25,000 --> 01:07:34,000
And one day that air conditioner broke loose and fell down because

611
01:07:34,000 --> 01:07:44,000
it was rotten where they had mounted it in the ceiling and it fell down and destroyed, I don't know, a thousand, two thousand dollars worth of my stuff.

612
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:53,000
Clearly their fault. Clearly their fault. They wouldn't touch it. They wouldn't reimburse a bot.

613
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:56,000
Now, in that case, luckily we had insurance and insurance paid up.

614
01:07:56,000 --> 01:08:04,000
Took them like five months, but they paid up amazingly. I never expected them to pay up, but they did.

615
01:08:04,000 --> 01:08:10,000
And I don't know if the insurance company went after the Chinese people after that or not. I have no idea.

616
01:08:10,000 --> 01:08:16,000
We would have never been privy to it.

617
01:08:16,000 --> 01:08:20,000
That entire stay in that home was like that. It never ended.

618
01:08:20,000 --> 01:08:34,000
I was in the bathroom. I was in one of the bathrooms downstairs one night about 11, 12 o'clock at night.

619
01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:38,000
I just got done in the bathroom. I was just like reaching for the bathroom door to come out.

620
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:48,000
And then I was going to go across this big tile room and then up these huge hardwood stairs up to my room and go to bed.

621
01:08:48,000 --> 01:08:55,000
That was the plan. I touched the door, touched the door and all of a sudden there's a giant earthquake.

622
01:08:55,000 --> 01:09:02,000
The whole house is shaking.

623
01:09:02,000 --> 01:09:06,000
I thought, what the hell? I thought, well, maybe I don't want to be trapped in this bathroom.

624
01:09:06,000 --> 01:09:09,000
Maybe I should get outside or something. I didn't know what.

625
01:09:09,000 --> 01:09:18,000
I just was kind of panicky and I jerked open the door and started to run into this huge marble tile floor room.

626
01:09:18,000 --> 01:09:23,000
Huge room. I could have parked a car in it.

627
01:09:23,000 --> 01:09:27,000
I got halfway across it and it's cracking. The tiles are cracking under my feet.

628
01:09:27,000 --> 01:09:34,000
And I thought, oh my God, this is a pretty good earthquake. This is pretty, this is a big one.

629
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:39,000
You know, Thailand doesn't usually get earthquakes, but this is a biggie. OK.

630
01:09:39,000 --> 01:09:43,000
You know, maybe L.A. is sinking right at that moment too.

631
01:09:43,000 --> 01:09:49,000
You know, I didn't know. And I started to run across this floor and I got halfway through it.

632
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:56,000
And all of a sudden I'm being thrown into the air. I'm being thrown into the air and landing on my ass.

633
01:09:56,000 --> 01:10:05,000
And there's this cacophony of grinding and smashing and breaking concrete.

634
01:10:05,000 --> 01:10:10,000
It was really like the bowels of hell were opening up.

635
01:10:10,000 --> 01:10:15,000
And I thought, oh shit, oh shit, there's a sinkhole. Oh shit.

636
01:10:15,000 --> 01:10:20,000
The house is going down in a sinkhole. Oh, son of a bitch. I'm not going to be in there. No, no, no.

637
01:10:20,000 --> 01:10:25,000
And I hit the front door and got outside into the, onto the driveway.

638
01:10:25,000 --> 01:10:28,000
And all the neighbors had come out because they had heard it also.

639
01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:37,000
It must have been exactly like that house in Poltergeist, you know, crumbling, imploding in upon itself and then sinking down in fear.

640
01:10:37,000 --> 01:10:41,000
That's exactly what it felt like. I'm serious. It's exactly.

641
01:10:41,000 --> 01:10:46,000
And the whole, the whole place is full of dust and it's, you know, blowing out through the windows.

642
01:10:46,000 --> 01:10:50,000
Holy son of a bitch.

643
01:10:50,000 --> 01:10:57,000
And pretty soon the whole neighborhood standing in our driveway looking horrified like, oh God, you got ghosts in there.

644
01:10:57,000 --> 01:11:06,000
You poor dumb bastards. You know, you got ghosts, you got ghosts, you got evil shit in there.

645
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:12,000
Son of a bitch. And there was a big TV on.

646
01:11:12,000 --> 01:11:18,000
And so that was flickering through all the dust and that was making it look more like a Poltergeist thing.

647
01:11:18,000 --> 01:11:24,000
And it kept crackling and snapping and shaking the whole house.

648
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:34,000
It kept doing that for a long time. I'm thinking 30 seconds before, you know, like a bag of popcorn, it just slowed down more and more and more and more.

649
01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:40,000
And then it stopped. And everybody's standing there with their mouths open.

650
01:11:40,000 --> 01:11:46,000
We're thinking, well, I guess we've gone to a hotel, you know?

651
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:53,000
And then the neighbors, they stepped up and they said, you know, that happened to us a couple years ago.

652
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:58,000
What do you mean it happened to you? In this house? No, in our house. Next door.

653
01:11:58,000 --> 01:12:12,000
They explained it. If you have these tiles, these ceramic tiles installed by a shit crew, which all the crews there are shit.

654
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:28,000
If they don't install them correctly and you get a big temperature contradiction between the ground and the upper parts of the floor through the concrete, they will just do that.

655
01:12:28,000 --> 01:12:34,000
They will build up so much stress in the tiles, not that construction guys know exactly what I'm talking about.

656
01:12:34,000 --> 01:12:43,000
I'm sure it happens everywhere in the world. But in Thailand, it happens a lot because the installations are shit.

657
01:12:43,000 --> 01:12:54,000
And I expected them to try to make us pay for that. Just waiting for it. Just waiting for it.

658
01:12:54,000 --> 01:13:02,000
Never hit an old man, but could happen, you know, but they didn't. I don't know if they thought about it. Maybe they discussed it. I don't know.

659
01:13:02,000 --> 01:13:12,000
But they didn't. They brought in crews, took them three or four weeks of grinding the dust, destroyed half of the things we owned, electronics.

660
01:13:12,000 --> 01:13:17,000
We didn't know the dust was going to be that bad. We didn't protect them. We didn't wrap them up in plastic bags and shit like that.

661
01:13:17,000 --> 01:13:23,000
We should have. We didn't know.

662
01:13:23,000 --> 01:13:29,000
And that was three or four weeks to replace all that.

663
01:13:29,000 --> 01:13:35,000
So the point is that the places you move into are going to be shit. They're going to be badly maintained.

664
01:13:35,000 --> 01:13:43,000
Everything installed in there is going to be of the lowest possible Chinese quality, which is below anything you can get in the US.

665
01:13:43,000 --> 01:13:54,000
The Chinese quality in Southeast Asia is below Chinese quality in the US.

666
01:13:54,000 --> 01:14:03,000
It's the worst crap on the face of the earth. So everything that's in your condo in your house, it's going to be it's going to fail and fail and fail and fail and fail.

667
01:14:03,000 --> 01:14:15,000
Just continuously. And the only, well, geez, I can say the only remedy is to pay a lot of money and import it from the US or Germany or whatever.

668
01:14:15,000 --> 01:14:25,000
But that's not the remedy either, because even things like PVC pipe under the house is still going to happen.

669
01:14:25,000 --> 01:14:32,000
So we had. Every day, every day, there were several things that I had to fix.

670
01:14:32,000 --> 01:14:37,000
Coming down the beautiful hardwood stairs.

671
01:14:37,000 --> 01:14:45,000
One of the stairs failed, slipped all the way to the bottom, screwed me up for about two weeks and did for two weeks.

672
01:14:45,000 --> 01:14:52,000
In the US, it's soon because the stair was installed improperly.

673
01:14:52,000 --> 01:14:56,000
In Southeast Asia, you suck it up.

674
01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:59,000
Take lots and lots of ID profan.

675
01:14:59,000 --> 01:15:02,000
If you had anything planned, you're not planned anymore.

676
01:15:02,000 --> 01:15:12,000
Two weeks is about three weeks before I was really walking normally.

677
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:16,000
Almost every switch in the place failed. Half of the air conditioners failed.

678
01:15:16,000 --> 01:15:25,000
Probably the C1, if you were five, six, seven, eight, nine, probably nine or ten air conditioners, ten, probably.

679
01:15:25,000 --> 01:15:30,000
Ten, ten, I think, air conditioners, half of them failed.

680
01:15:30,000 --> 01:15:33,000
The.

681
01:15:33,000 --> 01:15:36,000
I would look at what failed.

682
01:15:36,000 --> 01:15:41,000
If it was a small thing, I would pay for it.

683
01:15:41,000 --> 01:15:45,000
If it was a big thing like the motor or the compressor, no.

684
01:15:45,000 --> 01:15:51,000
The owners would try to make me pay for it and I just say no.

685
01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:53,000
No.

686
01:15:53,000 --> 01:15:58,000
No. And they hate angry people. They just hate angry people.

687
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:01,000
They're scared of them. Well, it's good.

688
01:16:01,000 --> 01:16:04,000
I scare them. I hope.

689
01:16:04,000 --> 01:16:07,000
Jesus Christ.

690
01:16:07,000 --> 01:16:11,000
But we we moved out of there.

691
01:16:11,000 --> 01:16:15,000
And got the deposit back.

692
01:16:15,000 --> 01:16:17,000
All of it. Amazing.

693
01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:28,000
But of course, we had paid tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of into making their home better for them.

694
01:16:28,000 --> 01:16:33,000
So they benefited very greatly from us being there.

695
01:16:33,000 --> 01:16:38,000
We brought in professional cleaners to clean the whole thing. You know, they were very happy.

696
01:16:38,000 --> 01:16:43,000
I think they were kind of disappointed that they couldn't walk around and do the.

697
01:16:43,000 --> 01:16:47,000
Oh, I see dust. You know, they couldn't do that and probably pissed them off.

698
01:16:47,000 --> 01:16:50,000
They acted like they were disappointed. They just they just couldn't.

699
01:16:50,000 --> 01:16:54,000
They they went from top to bottom in that house looking for something they could fault.

700
01:16:54,000 --> 01:16:56,000
And there was nothing.

701
01:16:56,000 --> 01:17:01,000
Because it was a far better shape than it was when we moved in and far cleaner.

702
01:17:01,000 --> 01:17:04,000
So we got the deposit back on that.

703
01:17:04,000 --> 01:17:07,000
If it would have been me alone, probably not.

704
01:17:07,000 --> 01:17:10,000
I had a Thai girlfriend and she was feisty.

705
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:12,000
She wouldn't put up with any goddamn bullshit.

706
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:14,000
She hated Chinese.

707
01:17:14,000 --> 01:17:17,000
They all do. Hate them.

708
01:17:17,000 --> 01:17:20,000
They'll be polite to them, but they hate them.

709
01:17:20,000 --> 01:17:25,000
Because they've dealt with them too many times. The arrogance.

710
01:17:25,000 --> 01:17:28,000
And the bullshit.

711
01:17:28,000 --> 01:17:32,000
Condescension. Insults.

712
01:17:32,000 --> 01:17:39,000
And this didn't it didn't help the case that the son of this owner had insulted her quite a few times in Thai.

713
01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:46,000
And she would only tell me later, she didn't want me to hit him.

714
01:17:46,000 --> 01:17:49,000
So it's a miracle we got a refund on that deposit.

715
01:17:49,000 --> 01:17:55,000
Just a miracle. But like I said, if had I been alone, no, I don't think there's any way I would have got it.

716
01:17:55,000 --> 01:18:04,000
And the deposit on that place had been quite large also.

717
01:18:04,000 --> 01:18:12,000
I moved into a double five story shophouse.

718
01:18:12,000 --> 01:18:18,000
Busy soy commercial.

719
01:18:18,000 --> 01:18:25,000
There were one two businesses out in front in our front area.

720
01:18:25,000 --> 01:18:27,000
When I moved in.

721
01:18:27,000 --> 01:18:32,000
And those went with.

722
01:18:32,000 --> 01:18:38,000
The rent also, I got to administrate them and collect the money from them.

723
01:18:38,000 --> 01:18:44,000
Now this was a five story.

724
01:18:44,000 --> 01:18:47,000
Five floors.

725
01:18:47,000 --> 01:18:51,000
Double shophouse on a commercial.

726
01:18:51,000 --> 01:18:53,000
Big Boulevard.

727
01:18:53,000 --> 01:18:55,000
Hot commercial area.

728
01:18:55,000 --> 01:18:58,000
And the rent there was.

729
01:18:58,000 --> 01:19:03,000
Six hundred a month.

730
01:19:03,000 --> 01:19:06,000
I can't even count how many bedrooms.

731
01:19:06,000 --> 01:19:09,000
I don't know.

732
01:19:09,000 --> 01:19:12,000
Probably like eight.

733
01:19:12,000 --> 01:19:16,000
Yeah, probably eight bedrooms, probably.

734
01:19:16,000 --> 01:19:19,000
Well, let's see, no, probably.

735
01:19:19,000 --> 01:19:23,000
Seven bathrooms, something like that.

736
01:19:23,000 --> 01:19:26,000
I had to pay a huge deposit to get in there.

737
01:19:26,000 --> 01:19:28,000
Nothing worked.

738
01:19:28,000 --> 01:19:31,000
It took us three months to get.

739
01:19:31,000 --> 01:19:36,000
To get it to the point it was livable.

740
01:19:36,000 --> 01:19:43,000
It had been the ground floor had been a motorcycle repair shop.

741
01:19:43,000 --> 01:19:48,000
So we painted the whole thing top to bottom.

742
01:19:48,000 --> 01:19:49,000
Did it well.

743
01:19:49,000 --> 01:19:53,000
Good, good work. Good paint, good work.

744
01:19:53,000 --> 01:19:58,000
So we basically brought that building back to life.

745
01:19:58,000 --> 01:20:06,000
And we continued to work on it for all couple of years we were there.

746
01:20:06,000 --> 01:20:09,000
Two things put the kibosh on that.

747
01:20:09,000 --> 01:20:15,000
One was.

748
01:20:15,000 --> 01:20:19,000
There's a class of seller in Thailand and I have not.

749
01:20:19,000 --> 01:20:24,000
You see it a little bit in some other countries. Thailand is the biggest on it.

750
01:20:24,000 --> 01:20:28,000
These people, they get a pickup.

751
01:20:28,000 --> 01:20:30,000
And they fill it full of shit in the back.

752
01:20:30,000 --> 01:20:32,000
Probably got a canopy over it.

753
01:20:32,000 --> 01:20:40,000
And they put a couple of huge, biggest ones they can afford loudspeakers on the roof of their pickup.

754
01:20:40,000 --> 01:20:45,000
And they hook it up to some kind of a player and a microphone.

755
01:20:45,000 --> 01:20:50,000
And they record some inane sales pitch in Thai.

756
01:20:50,000 --> 01:20:52,000
And it loops, just repeats.

757
01:20:52,000 --> 01:20:58,000
And they play that through the loudspeakers endlessly.

758
01:20:58,000 --> 01:21:01,000
And it's so loud that well there's a few of them.

759
01:21:01,000 --> 01:21:06,000
Probably 20% of them are somewhat polite.

760
01:21:06,000 --> 01:21:10,000
And they will just turn it up loud enough so that people in their area can hear it.

761
01:21:10,000 --> 01:21:15,000
They drive very slowly through these neighborhoods.

762
01:21:15,000 --> 01:21:19,000
And if you want whatever it is they're selling, oranges or whatever the hell.

763
01:21:19,000 --> 01:21:21,000
Papaya.

764
01:21:21,000 --> 01:21:25,000
Oh god, papaya.

765
01:21:25,000 --> 01:21:29,000
Then you hear that thing coming. It's like the ice cream truck call.

766
01:21:29,000 --> 01:21:31,000
And you hear that thing coming, you run out there and you flag them down.

767
01:21:31,000 --> 01:21:33,000
And you buy what you want.

768
01:21:33,000 --> 01:21:36,000
Excuse me, it's a good system.

769
01:21:36,000 --> 01:21:46,000
Except that Thais are tied with Filipinos for being loud and obnoxious.

770
01:21:46,000 --> 01:21:49,000
Rudely so.

771
01:21:49,000 --> 01:21:53,000
Their solution to everything is to make it louder.

772
01:21:53,000 --> 01:22:01,000
If they're not selling enough papaya today, crank that baby up 11, you know.

773
01:22:01,000 --> 01:22:06,000
And everybody just kind of grins and bears it.

774
01:22:06,000 --> 01:22:15,000
All conversation stops as they pass slowly, slowly by like a sloth.

775
01:22:15,000 --> 01:22:18,000
And you just wait. You just wait. You just look at each other.

776
01:22:18,000 --> 01:22:21,000
You're trying to talk about something important. You just look at each other and just wait.

777
01:22:21,000 --> 01:22:27,000
But then they'll stop in front of your place. Right in front of your place.

778
01:22:27,000 --> 01:22:30,000
Turn it up a little louder, they get out and they go to lunch.

779
01:22:30,000 --> 01:22:36,000
Well, they're not even there to consummate a sale. You know, they're not even in the fucking truck.

780
01:22:36,000 --> 01:22:41,000
But they're trying to attract customers for the hour that they're going to have lunch somewhere.

781
01:22:41,000 --> 01:22:45,000
And you don't know necessarily where they are.

782
01:22:45,000 --> 01:22:52,000
So our neighborhood began to be popular with bees.

783
01:22:52,000 --> 01:22:55,000
And it got more and more and more and more and more popular.

784
01:22:55,000 --> 01:23:00,000
And every week there was more of them. Started out one and then there was two.

785
01:23:00,000 --> 01:23:06,000
And then there was ten and then there was thirty and then there was sixty.

786
01:23:06,000 --> 01:23:14,000
And sometimes we would have five or six or seven of them parked on the curb in front of our building.

787
01:23:14,000 --> 01:23:21,000
In front of all. Well, our building had the two food stalls out in front.

788
01:23:21,000 --> 01:23:32,000
And then in the whole row there, there was another six or seven or eight food stalls, maybe more, nine or ten.

789
01:23:32,000 --> 01:23:39,000
That were between the other shop houses in the street. And those belonged to other people.

790
01:23:39,000 --> 01:23:46,000
So we would get five or six or seven of these pickups parked in front of all these food stalls.

791
01:23:46,000 --> 01:23:55,000
And they'd all cranked up their loudspeakers to compete with the other trucks because they wanted to be the loudest one.

792
01:23:55,000 --> 01:24:00,000
And they'd lock up the trucks and go eat somewhere. They just walk away.

793
01:24:00,000 --> 01:24:04,000
Sometimes they'd get on a tuk-tuk to go to the mall.

794
01:24:04,000 --> 01:24:11,000
And all business stopped. The people eating at the food stalls couldn't talk anymore.

795
01:24:11,000 --> 01:24:16,000
They couldn't even place orders because nobody could hear them.

796
01:24:16,000 --> 01:24:21,000
And they couldn't hear the people and you couldn't make change because nobody could hear anybody.

797
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:31,000
And, you know, all commerce stopped because of these street sellers.

798
01:24:31,000 --> 01:24:41,000
And we, I mean, I'd been there a long time by then and I knew you don't try to fight this shit. You don't. You cannot.

799
01:24:41,000 --> 01:24:48,000
You can't. Love it or leave it. You don't like it. Go home.

800
01:24:48,000 --> 01:24:52,000
OK, that's what they'll tell you.

801
01:24:52,000 --> 01:25:02,000
But we were really established there by then. We had the two rental shops out in front. The girlfriend had two shops of her own out in front.

802
01:25:02,000 --> 01:25:06,000
We had a lot of stuff going on there.

803
01:25:06,000 --> 01:25:13,000
And we needed to conduct that business.

804
01:25:13,000 --> 01:25:22,000
And these people were so incredibly unspeakably arrogant and rude.

805
01:25:22,000 --> 01:25:31,000
Sometimes they would drive through like people's driveways behind our shop.

806
01:25:31,000 --> 01:25:37,000
And they would just park in front of people's homes back there in the little residential area.

807
01:25:37,000 --> 01:25:44,000
They'd park in front of people's homes and crank this goddamn loudspeakers up.

808
01:25:44,000 --> 01:25:51,000
Once in a while, the Thais would come out and tell them, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.

809
01:25:51,000 --> 01:25:55,000
Baby tried to sleep, you know, and they didn't give a rat's ass. They didn't care.

810
01:25:55,000 --> 01:25:58,000
Meant nothing to them.

811
01:25:58,000 --> 01:26:02,000
Occasionally, some husband would come out and bark at them.

812
01:26:02,000 --> 01:26:05,000
Sometimes they'd move and sometimes they wouldn't.

813
01:26:05,000 --> 01:26:09,000
I didn't do any of that because I knew this way lies madness.

814
01:26:09,000 --> 01:26:15,000
So when I finally after after six months of this.

815
01:26:15,000 --> 01:26:20,000
Where they're just adding more and more and more and more and more to them all the time.

816
01:26:20,000 --> 01:26:24,000
After about six months, I started videotaping them.

817
01:26:24,000 --> 01:26:27,000
Just with a phone and cell phone.

818
01:26:27,000 --> 01:26:31,000
Because I knew this was going to come to some kind of a head.

819
01:26:31,000 --> 01:26:35,000
Because nobody could tolerate this. It was so over the top.

820
01:26:35,000 --> 01:26:39,000
Nobody could tolerate it.

821
01:26:39,000 --> 01:26:42,000
I hear the same complaints from guys living in Bangkok.

822
01:26:42,000 --> 01:26:46,000
They're up on 40 or 50 or 60 floor.

823
01:26:46,000 --> 01:26:55,000
And they got these food trucks down below that just blast this shit.

824
01:26:55,000 --> 01:26:57,000
And lots of them just go. You just got to leave the building.

825
01:26:57,000 --> 01:27:00,000
You've got to find a building where that's not happening because you can't sleep.

826
01:27:00,000 --> 01:27:02,000
You can't watch TV. You can't do anything.

827
01:27:02,000 --> 01:27:06,000
That is the essence of Thailand.

828
01:27:06,000 --> 01:27:09,000
That is Thailand. That is everything in Thailand.

829
01:27:09,000 --> 01:27:14,000
Okay. This is a really, really, really big lesson for you.

830
01:27:14,000 --> 01:27:18,000
If you don't like that kind of thing, do not. Do not go to Thailand.

831
01:27:18,000 --> 01:27:29,000
This kind of thing is probably up there around 60 percent of the reason I left Thailand.

832
01:27:29,000 --> 01:27:37,000
The majority of the reason I left Thailand was because of this loudness and this rudeness.

833
01:27:37,000 --> 01:27:42,000
Jesus. So anyway, I started videotaping these guys. Or women or whatever.

834
01:27:42,000 --> 01:27:45,000
And they noticed it. And that was the idea.

835
01:27:45,000 --> 01:27:50,000
I wanted them to start thinking, hey, maybe we could turn it down a little bit.

836
01:27:50,000 --> 01:27:55,000
And many times I would very politely ask them, please, please, we can't even hear our customers.

837
01:27:55,000 --> 01:27:59,000
We can't even take our orders. Please, can you turn this down?

838
01:27:59,000 --> 01:28:04,000
And usually they just wouldn't or they turn it up.

839
01:28:04,000 --> 01:28:11,000
And I got to the point many, many times of almost losing my temper.

840
01:28:11,000 --> 01:28:16,000
I didn't, but I almost did. I wanted to. I wanted to just go off on them. Just go off on them.

841
01:28:16,000 --> 01:28:24,000
This is how shootings happen in America. This is one reason why they happen.

842
01:28:24,000 --> 01:28:28,000
Part of it is the offense that they're creating, the loudness.

843
01:28:28,000 --> 01:28:39,000
And the other half of it is their attitude towards you if you politely ask them to stop committing that offense.

844
01:28:39,000 --> 01:28:49,000
So finally, one of them, some punk Thai piece of shit guy, he came and parked right below our bedroom window.

845
01:28:49,000 --> 01:28:52,000
There's no way back. There is nobody.

846
01:28:52,000 --> 01:28:56,000
And you knew this was going to happen. You know, I knew it was going to happen.

847
01:28:56,000 --> 01:28:59,000
That's why I was collecting all the video.

848
01:28:59,000 --> 01:29:02,000
I wanted to have a really good case when this came down to it.

849
01:29:02,000 --> 01:29:06,000
And I knew it was going to, because nobody could live like this.

850
01:29:06,000 --> 01:29:14,000
And so I just had reams and reams and reams and reams and reams of video on my phone of these people doing this.

851
01:29:14,000 --> 01:29:16,000
And the phone picks up the sound really well.

852
01:29:16,000 --> 01:29:28,000
So you can see, you know, other people are trying to talk five feet away from you and they can't because the loudspeakers just blast them out.

853
01:29:28,000 --> 01:29:33,000
Jesus, what rude pieces of shit.

854
01:29:33,000 --> 01:29:37,000
In the old days, they were not a problem. They kept it down to a reasonable level.

855
01:29:37,000 --> 01:29:38,000
There weren't very many of them.

856
01:29:38,000 --> 01:29:42,000
And it was just kind of like part of the charm of Thailand, you know.

857
01:29:42,000 --> 01:29:45,000
And it was handy. And you go out there, you buy some oranges, you buy some durian.

858
01:29:45,000 --> 01:29:48,000
Whatever, you know, it was OK.

859
01:29:48,000 --> 01:29:52,000
Yeah, it was a little teensy, a little bit unpleasant.

860
01:29:52,000 --> 01:29:56,000
But maybe you wanted to use their services and they don't, they've gone in a minute.

861
01:29:56,000 --> 01:30:00,000
You know, they didn't park in front of anybody and turn it up and lock the truck and leave.

862
01:30:00,000 --> 01:30:02,000
You know, they're moving all the time.

863
01:30:02,000 --> 01:30:04,000
All you have to do is wait a minute, just a minute.

864
01:30:04,000 --> 01:30:08,000
You just wait a minute and they're gone.

865
01:30:08,000 --> 01:30:14,000
And the other thing is that when customers came, a lot of times they would turn it down so they could hear their customers, you know.

866
01:30:14,000 --> 01:30:21,000
But as there got to be more and more and more of them, fewer and fewer of them got customers.

867
01:30:21,000 --> 01:30:26,000
So they just kept it cranked up more and more and more.

868
01:30:26,000 --> 01:30:29,000
There's no reason to turn it down. They didn't have any customers.

869
01:30:29,000 --> 01:30:35,000
They turned up louder, the fewer customers they had, because they wanted the people, ten soys over to hear them.

870
01:30:35,000 --> 01:30:40,000
You know, three soys wasn't enough.

871
01:30:40,000 --> 01:30:44,000
They wanted people across town to hear them.

872
01:30:44,000 --> 01:30:49,000
And you could hear these things for a frickin' mile.

873
01:30:49,000 --> 01:30:52,000
God, and it just got worse and worse and worse.

874
01:30:52,000 --> 01:30:55,000
A period of about two years there, it just got worse.

875
01:30:55,000 --> 01:30:58,000
I don't even know what it is now. I haven't talked to anybody in that neighborhood since then.

876
01:30:58,000 --> 01:31:04,000
But anyway, one day this little jackass, a short type piece of shit,

877
01:31:04,000 --> 01:31:10,000
and he parked right below our bedroom window early in the morning, turned that crap on,

878
01:31:10,000 --> 01:31:16,000
and I went out on the balcony. Every floor that we had had a balcony in the front and in the back.

879
01:31:16,000 --> 01:31:19,000
So we were, you know, balcony poor.

880
01:31:19,000 --> 01:31:25,000
And I went out on the balcony. I was up, we slept on number three or four.

881
01:31:25,000 --> 01:31:27,000
Four, I think four.

882
01:31:27,000 --> 01:31:32,000
And I did a wide angle video showing this guy down there.

883
01:31:32,000 --> 01:31:36,000
He's got his loudspeaker going. He's just sitting in the truck.

884
01:31:36,000 --> 01:31:42,000
And I could see his hands on the wheel, because I'm almost directly above him.

885
01:31:42,000 --> 01:31:46,000
And I panned around, showed him, look, there's no customers here in this area. There's nothing here.

886
01:31:46,000 --> 01:31:50,000
There's only one reason why this guy is here and that's to annoy us.

887
01:31:50,000 --> 01:31:54,000
Because his friends had told him to come annoy us.

888
01:31:54,000 --> 01:31:58,000
And so I videotaped this for like five minutes.

889
01:31:58,000 --> 01:32:02,000
I thought, oh, well, this is good footage. This is good footage for the police.

890
01:32:02,000 --> 01:32:09,000
And finally he gets out of his truck and he looks straight up at me,

891
01:32:09,000 --> 01:32:15,000
because he knew, you know, we were up there. He was there to harass us.

892
01:32:15,000 --> 01:32:19,000
And he looked straight up to where I was and gave me some kind of a hand gesture.

893
01:32:19,000 --> 01:32:24,000
It wasn't the finger, or maybe it was. I can't remember.

894
01:32:24,000 --> 01:32:30,000
Some kind of an obscene hand gesture thing like, come on, motherfucker, come on down. Let's go.

895
01:32:30,000 --> 01:32:36,000
So I did. You know what? I did.

896
01:32:36,000 --> 01:32:39,000
And I kept the phone running all the time. I was about halfway down.

897
01:32:39,000 --> 01:32:43,000
A girlfriend figured out what the hell I was doing. She's like, oh God, oh God, oh God, no, no, no, no.

898
01:32:43,000 --> 01:32:45,000
This is going to be bloody.

899
01:32:45,000 --> 01:32:49,000
And she went to the window and started screaming at the guy.

900
01:32:49,000 --> 01:32:55,000
She told him, run, run, this man will kill you. Run. Now run. Get out. Get in your car. Go.

901
01:32:55,000 --> 01:33:00,000
And he actually did. He got in his truck and he drove about 50 yards away.

902
01:33:00,000 --> 01:33:02,000
Then he parked it and he got out and he walked back.

903
01:33:02,000 --> 01:33:09,000
But by then he had gotten on his phone and he had called all of his friends, all the other food vendors.

904
01:33:09,000 --> 01:33:12,000
And one by one by one, they were all showing up right then.

905
01:33:12,000 --> 01:33:22,000
So we ended up with probably 30 pickups surrounding and in front of our shop.

906
01:33:22,000 --> 01:33:28,000
And girlfriend said, I'm just calling the police because this is bullshit.

907
01:33:28,000 --> 01:33:35,000
So she called the police. They got there quickly. Thai police. Thai police can be good and bad.

908
01:33:35,000 --> 01:33:40,000
I've had more good experiences with them than most people, but I had really, really bad ones.

909
01:33:40,000 --> 01:33:47,000
I've told you some of them. Thai police showed up and everybody started giving their side of the story.

910
01:33:47,000 --> 01:33:53,000
And girlfriend, of course, was my advocate. She could speak Thai. These people can't speak English at all.

911
01:33:53,000 --> 01:33:59,000
So they stood up. She stood out there and faced them down for about an hour.

912
01:33:59,000 --> 01:34:01,000
They're all screaming at her, yelling at her. We're going to get you.

913
01:34:01,000 --> 01:34:05,000
And she's like, come on, come on. I've been fighting Muay Thai all my fucking life.

914
01:34:05,000 --> 01:34:11,000
You little bitch, come on. Right now, don't threaten. Come on.

915
01:34:11,000 --> 01:34:17,000
And of course, nobody would touch her because they're not a brave people at all.

916
01:34:17,000 --> 01:34:22,000
And there's no such thing as fighting one on one with a Thai. It's not going to happen.

917
01:34:22,000 --> 01:34:30,000
It's never going to happen. They will never fight unless there's five to one, male or female, whatever doesn't matter.

918
01:34:30,000 --> 01:34:37,000
So anyway, the cops stood there and patiently listened to all this. And finally, the cops asked them.

919
01:34:37,000 --> 01:34:42,000
They said, look, you know, we've been listening to you guys too, and you're too loud. You're just too loud.

920
01:34:42,000 --> 01:34:46,000
You're too loud. Everywhere you go, you're too loud. People tell us they don't like it.

921
01:34:46,000 --> 01:34:54,000
Are you going to quiet down? That's what the cops asked these little fuckheads.

922
01:34:54,000 --> 01:35:01,000
And the Thai seller said, no, no, we're not going to. No, we like being loud. And the police said, OK, come on.

923
01:35:01,000 --> 01:35:07,000
We're going down the station right now. We're going to the station right now. All of you, all of you, 30 of you. Come on.

924
01:35:07,000 --> 01:35:12,000
So we had this huge caravan. The police station was a couple of miles away.

925
01:35:12,000 --> 01:35:16,000
We all trooped down to the police station and trooped in and they had people waiting.

926
01:35:16,000 --> 01:35:26,000
And they ranted and raved about what an asshole I was because I had videotaped them doing bad things.

927
01:35:26,000 --> 01:35:33,000
And I just sat there. Girlfriend told me to shut up, shut up, wait for him to finish. Just be quiet.

928
01:35:33,000 --> 01:35:45,000
And I did. And when they were done venting, the cops looked at me and they said, OK, what do you got to say?

929
01:35:45,000 --> 01:35:49,000
And I said, well, I've got a lot of videotape. You want to see it? Yes.

930
01:35:49,000 --> 01:35:55,000
So they started watching this videotape and they're walking around showing it to all the other cops.

931
01:35:55,000 --> 01:36:03,000
And the cops sat back down, gave him the phone back. And everybody's quiet.

932
01:36:03,000 --> 01:36:11,000
And the cops said, look, you got to shut up. You're making too much noise. People don't like it.

933
01:36:11,000 --> 01:36:18,000
We've had other complaints. People don't like it. Shut the fuck up.

934
01:36:18,000 --> 01:36:25,000
And I thought, wow, I was really surprised the Thai police would take that position.

935
01:36:25,000 --> 01:36:34,000
And they talked to me in very friendly tones. And they were talking really bad to the Thais, the Thai sellers.

936
01:36:34,000 --> 01:36:43,000
And the cops said, OK, now we know what's going on. You're too loud. You're going to stop it.

937
01:36:43,000 --> 01:36:51,000
And we want you people to stand up and apologize to this thang.

938
01:36:51,000 --> 01:36:58,000
And the worst offenders, you and you and you and you, we want you to give him a hug.

939
01:36:58,000 --> 01:37:06,000
So they apologized, kind of sort of mumbling, grumbling. And then the ones that the cops had told them to give me a hug, they came over one at a time.

940
01:37:06,000 --> 01:37:16,000
Like, I got this thing I do. When somebody whose guts I hate give me a hug, I'll pat them on the back.

941
01:37:16,000 --> 01:37:23,000
Only don't pat them on the back. I'll leave fucking marks. Wham, wham. They're coughing up phlegm.

942
01:37:23,000 --> 01:37:30,000
And I say, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the hug, you know. Thank you.

943
01:37:30,000 --> 01:37:39,000
Like that. And they got red marks for fucking three days. But they can't show it because they got their pride, you know.

944
01:37:39,000 --> 01:37:46,000
They can't show that they'd hurt. Cops knew what the fuck I was doing.

945
01:37:46,000 --> 01:37:54,000
And anyway, so we all trooped back. They all got in their vehicles. They left. And they were quiet for about two days, three days.

946
01:37:54,000 --> 01:38:03,000
And then they just started cranking it right back up again. And we moved out.

947
01:38:03,000 --> 01:38:13,000
We were out of there in one day. Well, we weren't out. We had moved out. We weren't living there.

948
01:38:13,000 --> 01:38:26,000
After 24 hours, we had to kick out all the restaurants, all of everything, all the businesses in front. Just kicked them out.

949
01:38:26,000 --> 01:38:38,000
There was more to the reason for us leaving. If not for the Thai vendors, we would have left for another reason.

950
01:38:38,000 --> 01:38:44,000
And I can see now we're not going to have time in this tape to do it, to finish this up.

951
01:38:44,000 --> 01:38:49,000
So that's where we're going to leave it for this episode.

952
01:38:49,000 --> 01:38:56,000
We have backed down the Thai sellers. Cops backed them down. We backed them down. They were nice for about three days.

953
01:38:56,000 --> 01:39:10,000
They went back to their stupid Thai obnoxious, arrogant shit. But there was another reason exactly as important

954
01:39:10,000 --> 01:39:15,000
that we would have left for this other reason alone.

955
01:39:15,000 --> 01:39:27,000
So we had two things, two separate things, two independent things that 100% each were driving us out of this shophouse.

956
01:39:27,000 --> 01:39:33,000
So that's where we're leaving it for now. And that's where we'll take up for a number, whatever, 20.

957
01:39:33,000 --> 01:39:40,000
I forgot. 23, I think. I don't know.

958
01:39:40,000 --> 01:39:49,000
And then we'll finish up, next episode, we'll finish up other bad things that can happen to you as a renter in Southeast Asia or as a buyer.

959
01:39:49,000 --> 01:39:54,000
My advice is do not buy. Do not. Do not. Do not buy.

960
01:39:54,000 --> 01:40:01,000
You can't own land in Thailand anyway. You got to go through this convoluted corporate fucking thing that's not reliable.

961
01:40:01,000 --> 01:40:06,000
Well, it kind of sort of is, but maybe it's not. You know, you'll never know for sure.

962
01:40:06,000 --> 01:40:12,000
So you're scared to invest very much money. You can own a condo and you can do some other things.

963
01:40:12,000 --> 01:40:18,000
You can own a house, but not the land that sits on it. So you figure that one out. That's Thailand.

964
01:40:18,000 --> 01:40:28,000
Other countries are different. They're all whacked. There's no sure thing to owning land in any Southeast Asian country that I know of.

965
01:40:28,000 --> 01:40:33,000
I don't know of any place where it's just cut and dried and reliable and stable.

966
01:40:33,000 --> 01:40:39,000
Anyway, so in the next episode, we will finish up what the other reason was for moving out of the shop house.

967
01:40:39,000 --> 01:40:43,000
And then we'll go through the next rental and the next rental like that.

968
01:40:43,000 --> 01:40:56,000
And I'm trying to make you do some really serious, serious thinking about do you want to live in Southeast Asia?

969
01:40:56,000 --> 01:41:04,000
And if you do want to live there, what's the most safest and reliable and peaceful and stress-free way to live?

970
01:41:04,000 --> 01:41:12,000
So that's what we're going to do for next tape. Hopefully, no girls in that one either.

971
01:41:12,000 --> 01:41:20,000
I mean, they're going to creep back in here, you know. You can't get rid of them. You can't push them all into the sea.

972
01:41:20,000 --> 01:41:24,000
Not that I'd want to, you know.

973
01:41:24,000 --> 01:41:33,000
I don't know what the hell. If I was an evil emperor, why not? Why not?

974
01:41:33,000 --> 01:41:41,000
No, I mean, no, you couldn't really do that, right? That would be really bad, right?

975
01:41:41,000 --> 01:41:53,000
God, life would go on so much easier. Oh, wait a minute. Wait. No, life would not go on at all. Oh, I forgot about that part. Oh, suck.

976
01:41:53,000 --> 01:42:00,000
Cats. You just get cats. You push all the women into the sea. All the guys get cats.

977
01:42:00,000 --> 01:42:05,000
And we just live out our lives until human race is extinct.

978
01:42:05,000 --> 01:42:11,000
Yeah, that's perfectly reasonable to me. Let's do that. Let's make that a plan.

979
01:42:11,000 --> 01:42:16,000
I mean, how many guys are going on board for that?

980
01:42:16,000 --> 01:42:27,000
Okay. Thank you very much. Good evening and good night.