Thread: Back in Bangkok to Stay—more or less

Hi, I’m 62 years old, recently retired, and living in Bangkok. For the past 29 years, I’ve travelled to Thailand for work and pleasure, working my way to three quarters of my time in the US and one quarter in Thailand. Now, I’m reversing that pattern, with 9 months a year in BKK and about 3 months in the US.
Goals in life are now simple: chill; have fun; have adventures; and visit national parks.

Enjoy

Hope i can still do that at 62 and beyond.

Good for you "oldracer".

Get that Thai drivers license so you can get into the national parks at the Thai rate....

All the best to you and would enjoy seeing your pics posted from all the national park trips.

Ciao!

A Thai DL is definitely part of the future plan. During the last three months, I’ve visited and stayed in park bungalows in Doi Suthep-Pui, Huai Nam Dang, Tung Salaeng Luang, Khao Yai, and Ta Phraya national parks. I do have a lot of photos to share—all I need is motivation to get my ass in gear and do something about it.

Do you have to book and pay in advance for bungalows in national parks because thats the way their website reads ?
I don't like booking in advance and have tried just turning up but the idiots just give me the run around .

As usual in Los...it depends.

In Khao Yai, you are supposed to book, but we have turned up and stayed.

Almost every other NP we stayed in, we did it on the hop, no bookings except for maybe once or twice.

The times we booked, there was no problem. Only thing with booking is that you do not see what you are getting or want to get first.

I like Khao Yai a lot. My first time there was about 13 years ago, and all I saw were a few barking deer and a parking lot full of sambar deer one evening. Since that time, hornbills, civets, porcupines, elephants, macaques and gibbons have all put in regular appearances during my visits. There was a story a month or so ago that someone had released a couple of crocs which proceeded to make things interesting for the park rangers. A wildlife photographer friend of mine keeps bemoaning that most of the wildlife are now mainly concentrated in the vicinity of the park headquarters and that all of the tigers are gone. However, I always have a very good experience when I visit Khao Yai and don’t have any claim to being an expert on such things.

Reservations have always been made in advance by a friend of mine, so I am afraid that I can’t comment on trying to secure a bungalow as a walk-in visitor. I would imagine that it would be pretty difficult, though, during a weekend and definitely not a good plan during a holiday period.

Yes good point re holidays and weekends.

the crocs were photographed, but have not heard if they were caught yet.

Until they are caught they cannot determine if they are friend or fo.

I take my kids to swim in the river nearby our house, it comes straight out of the NP.....but if I spotted one, sure I could wrestle it away from my kids.

A park that I want to visit, but have never had the occasion, is Kaeng Krachan in Petchaburi--keep hearing about its incredible wildlife. Hey, I guess it’s good to have some new places to visit and not having been there and done that.

So, my next task is to create a user gallery of photos. Damn, I hate work. That’s one of the reasons I retired [at least today’s reason].

My other interests include sports car racing, wine [women, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah]. Is anyone in the forum currently involved in an active role in sports car racing in Thailand?

Yeah there is some guy building the fastest car on the planet in Pattaya...centre for fast car research and testing.

Originally Posted by oldracer

My other interests include sports car racing, wine [women, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah]. Is anyone in the forum currently involved in an active role in sports car racing in Thailand?

Driving Force?

Thanks. I'll send Driving Force a PM. I'm looking for a group of folks to hang out with and hopefully find a way to be useful to them.

A thousand years ago (1970's - 80's), I raced in low-level stuff in Sports Car Club of America with some degree of success. Work and family reared their nasty heads, and I bowed out from 1989 until 2006. An interesting side-note was driving in the official inaugural race at Bira Circuit in April [I think] 1986 as a guest driver for Ford of Thailand.

My second foray into racing met with a fair degree of mediocrity. I only raced a few races each year, not getting sufficient track time to improve beyond mid-pack. That, not setting goals and showing an amazing ability to plow through cash [with retirement from my day job looming] hastened my second, ahem, retirement from racing. In one week-end it was easy to piss away more than my monthly cost of living here in BKK.

Originally Posted by oldracer

Is anyone in the forum currently involved in an active role in sports car racing in Thailand?

Apparently the forum owner owns (or did own) a sports racing car ... he might be able to give some advice

Oh yeah ... welcome dude

Apparently, I suffer from premature PM-itis, with only 10 posts under my belt. However, had my post gone through [and maybe one of you kind folks could forward this to Driving Force for me] I would have said that I am a former racer who is looking for a group of racers to hang out with in the shop and at the track, and to make a contribution in some way to a team. Barring that, I’m looking for folks to drink beer with and share racing lies at the track.

Originally Posted by oldracer

Apparently, I suffer from premature PM-itis, with only 10 posts under my belt.

That was fortunate. The guy has a few screws lose.

What made you decide to become an ex-Pat?

First, it was time to retire. I had been in my university position for more than 33 years. With the recession, funding in my area fell apart.

I had worked on and off in Thailand for about 30 years. Most of this time was spent with Thai universities, with the remainder conducting various programs with natural resource managment-related organizations. Three months of the year was spent in Thailand and the rest of the time, in the US. All I did was to reverse the time allocation so that three quarters are now spent in Thailand.

I was comfortable with Thai people, Thai food, climate, etc, and there were numerous interesting things to do. So, why not give this a shot while the health was still good? It was something that I always wanted to do, and I had the means and opportunity to do it. In comparison, retirement in the US looked to be boring.

Hi Oldracer welcome to Teak Door, hope you have a fun time on your journeys