Live in Issan? What do you do?

[NickA]

^

nice

being the operative word

[Robbie Dye]

But I am sure I herad the buffalo must be over 18 too?

[ray23]

Well lets see, there is tennis. golf, bolwing, billards, swimming. arobics, gyms, ball room dancing, Thai classes , Mui Thai classes, fishing, you cold go to the horse races and bet he ponies, watch motorcylce races, Ultra light flying So pick your poison.

Mine is motorcycle touring.

Issan does not mean Siberia, I live four Klms outside of Udon, go towards town all the above is availble, make a right instead I have rice paddies and village life.

Then there is what you decide to make for yourself whatever that might be. You can watch eye candy at the mall and drink coffee. Or you can get lot closer to the eye candy depedns on you. I go out to lunch I go to one of the many farrang resurants in town. I pick ones where guys as genreal rule don't sit around consuming depressents and telling me how bad life is here, how supid the Thai's are Ect.

As far as I know we don't have a sky diving club yet there is one you could work on

Lots of guy do gentlemen farming to keep busy, not my thing but hey if it makes you content very worthwhile.

Running errands consumes large amounts of time. I found a lot thing to do simple beacuse I very seldom drink not a moral thing I want a beer I have one. But you won't find most of the things I listed by sitting in a bar.

I have more time now in my life then I ever had. Heck I even have time to sit and write this when in fact it really means very little in the scheme of things. It's a real privilage to be able to waist a little time these days.

When you first get here you want have time for activities you will be to busy, sitting things up and learning how to live here. Seems like there is always a festival going on of some kind.

So guess the answer is what do you want to do don't answer that quickly cause more then likely you can have it just make sure it's what you want

[tsicar]

I mean, if you don't teach and your not finacially 'set', then what do you do?
Farm?
Build?
Use your farang skills as an efficient 'handyman' type figure?
Doss?
Scrounge?
Live off the land?
Drink so much that you don't know what the f**ks going on?

Just interested.

Cheers.

all of the above.
'cept there's not much time to sleep inbetween
cheers

[tsicar]

^ Or her younger sister !

just greened ivor for his reply, then read yours- brilliant!

[Texpat]

Build a nice house. sorted. no rent. ever.

Buy a car, cash. sorted for 7-9 years. (factor replacement into long-term plan)

Never spend more than you're willing to lose. It's a gamble. This ain't switzerland. If you're not greened up, go home. They won't entertain your ilk anyway -- for long. I'm not minted, but I've seen too many told to hit the bricks.

Thailand ain't a freebie.

[Silent Orchestra]

If I could hook up with a girl who had a father in the police, I reckon I could do very nicely out of Thailand.

[Fabian]

^Or you are really fucked.

[Silent Orchestra]

Yes, if it went wrong, it would go badly wrong.

[Dalton]

What do I do here ?? I dont even know where to start...Building up a super-intensive fish farm, with all what that includes, and that's a long list..

[Ban Saray]

Tried it for a year, was of the beaten track a bit, 70 kms from Korat.
Built a house, started a teak farm, installed running water etc. The biggest downer was that there was and still aren't telephone cable to the houses. They have a public box down the road, but refuse to install a phone line - so no internet.
I visit 2-3 times a year now, but my hand is always in my pocket. All the relos always seems to have sick buffalos, or rice that needs harvesting. Last visit it was 10k for a cousins schooling, 6k for another cousins electric piano, and 10k for a mates son's Budda celebration. My missus was conned for a similar amount from other strays.
Still and all they are mostly family so no big deal, and they look after our teak farm - sort of.

[Dalton]

^ Well, internet wise you can get the IP-Star like I have dosent require a phone-line, and its fast as well.
To run a farm, you have to be there all the time, since you are the one who are investing, most Thais dont care if you are not pressent, it aint there money, so why bother to much, the farang have more where that came from....been there myself..

[Tao]

^ I just got IPStar yesterday. Took them a little over two weeks to get off their arses to come install it. No complaints with the speed, i'm downloading at 120k just now.

Back to the original post... i drink Chang and watch the relatives work. They regularly walk past to check that i have enough beer and ensure that i have enough ice in it.

[Texpat]

No phone lines where I live either. I use an GPRS modem. Slow, like me, but allows plenty of time to change/delete posts before anyone gets hurt.

[somtamslap]

i drink Chang and watch the relatives work.

Excellent.

Was the otherway round in my family until I lost the plot with them and told them to get off their fucking arses.

I just got IPStar yesterday.

The speed is fine, but its a bit costly.

[Dalton]

The speed is fine, but its a bit costly.

True, but the time you can spend with it beats the hell out of drinking Chang all day..

[redwood]

Forget planning on anything based off a phone line in Buri Ram province outside of the main towns (buri ram, nong rong, prakhon chai). The phone company has been burned so many times by wire thieves that you can't even pay them to come out and string line up.
They strung a line near our village (15km outside prakhon chai) three times in a month in 2005. On each occasion the wire was gone less than two weeks later. Now they come out only about once a year to do it for the telephone booths and that line is usually taken in less than a week.
The last time they did it in our area was in early September. The new line was stripped in less than 72 hours. About 0230 that morning all the dogs seemed to go off simultaneously in the village and woke everyone up barking. When we looked outside, several pickup trucks were driving away from the village with their lights out. hmmmmm, what happened? At least no one in the village has a hard wired phone.
Just by coincidence I went bicycle riding early the next morning on back roads going towards Baan Kruat. I went by a tiny village, about 10km from our village (to remained unnamed for our protection). I rode right by a house that had a 1.5 x 2 meter high pile of stripped new telephone wire that would have fit neatly in the back one of the two pickup trucks that were parked in the yard. About six guys were haggling in the yard as I rode by. When I backtracked the same route two hours later on the way home the pile of wire and one of the pickup trucks was gone. Two guys were still sitting in the yard, drinking, with a new case of whiskey lao by the front door.
When I made it back to our village and reported it to our village chief they appeared to already know where it went. When I told them the location and the village name, they said that village was notorious for similar events. They called the police, who asked if the wire was still there. When told it was already gone, this was less that 12 hours after it had been taken, they said they weren't interested but maybe the phone company was. The phone company wasn't interested unless the police were. Go figure. So much for my thinking I could make a difference here.
I couldn't swear to a portion of what I witnessed but one of the trucks in that villager's yard had the TOT logo spray painted on the doors of the truck.
In any case, for the three homes in our village that have internet, we all use wireless (CDMA). It's only about 820 baht a month for unlimited use, plus about a 1,500 baht up front registration/equipment fee. We had to go to Buri Ram to get it.
The wireless internet is slow (avg 80kbs), but works. Forget doing any downloads larger than 5-6mb. The connection seems to disconnect at random times after 60-90 minutes of use, if being used during the late afternoon to circa 2100 hrs. Seems the more people on the system at one time in a given area the slower the connection speed becomes.
A friend in the next village down has IPSTAR, nice but expensive circa 4,000 baht a month.

[Whiteshiva]

Great post Redwood,

Forget doing any downloads larger than 5-6mb. The connection seems to disconnect at random times after 60-90 minutes of use, if being used during the late afternoon to circa 2100 hrs.

Try using a download manager like GetRight (or similar), allows you to restart your downloads from where they were when you got disconnected.

[Ivor Biggun]

Forget planning on anything based off a phone line in Buri Ram province outside of the main towns (buri ram

Can't say I've had or heard of problems regarding phone lines in this area, Redwood. I live 15 km west of Nang Rong in the rice fields, more or less.

[Texpat]

They're stringing phone lines now out where I live. Can't imagine I'd ever need one.

[Rigger]

Our village has never had phone lines but we have had phone boxes for about 5 years now

[Megahorn]

Me thinks it is OK in Isaan as long as she is over 18

Me thinks it is OK in Isaan as long as you can give her dad 10K.

I agree.

[Dalton]

A friend in the next village down has IPSTAR, nice but expensive circa 4,000 baht a month.

I have IP-STAR in Buri-Ram, unlimited 1 Mbps/512Kbps and I pay 2.600 baht/month...Your friend is paying to much..

[Reaper]

Went to this town once where there had been 5 falang bars in the village. I asked them what they did everyday and was given this dirty look as if to say what do you think.

Each day a falang bar gets a turn to be visited by the other falang bar owners. They pay their bills by settling there respective bar tabs with each other.

How they made a profit I don't know!

[Dalton]

^ They dont care, the quicker they get drunk, the faster the day is over...