Jambo

Unfortunately not! Sai has a farm/garden nursery; a separate joint business with sister; their diabetic Mum, plus 6 dogs and 3 cats to look after in Mae Sot and the house in Bangsaray. It's back to visits to Thailand and video calls twice a day on Line.

HI Paul. Basically, the realisation of how bad my hips had become turned what was intended to be a 3-month family visit back to the UK post Covid to something very different following x-rays on my knees and hips. It has been made far worse by the fact that both hips did not deteriorate at the same rate. It was only after I had waited well over two years for the left hip to be replaced that the right hip started to go fully tits up and I find myself back in the queue once again. I had BUPA when I first visited Thailand but that was a waste of time because they had placed exclusions on both legs thanks to previous sports injuries. Two lots of £16K each time for going private was out of the question so I am back to basically living in Scotland and visits to Thailand as long as pain in the hip permits. Hopefully, I will be back for a month later in the year. I may well bring that visit forward at short notice.

Far out man! Mr Happy meeting you at the Airport? 😂 Don't forget to give B** my regards!

The last couple of times I went to AC we had to fly to Manila as they had stopped direct flights to Clark Field from Bangkok. Or maybe.............................it was the other way round? My memory is shite these days. 🤪 Apart from my first trip, I always stayed in the Pacific Breeze. Nice wee swimming pool and the food was OK. I think Terry L got us all a discount. Although AC itself really was the absolute pits I have many fond memories of our on tour nocturnal activities. The quality of the eye candy might well have been lacking at times but the quantity was staggering in many of the GoGo's. A case of picking out the hidden gems. Afternoons, I/we would occasionally venture into a bar called "Candy Shop" if I remember the name correctly? Some very nice looking girls but many of the "If they look too young, they ARE too young" cherry variety. I was always immediately identified as a soft touch for lady drinks but on principle never bought for cherry girls. Well, at least, not the 100% variety. 😂 Then there was the time my mate John (aka "Sweatie" ) nearly got mugged in Fields Ave by the ugliest lady boy in the world. Nearly pissed myself laughing! Enough reminiscing.

I will be very interested to read the replies you receive. I could, in theory, offer suggestions based on my own experiences but the problem is post covid the AC that I knew and experienced simply no longer appears to exist. I noticed in a video clip a few months ago that "Brown Sugar" the very first GoGo I visited on my exploratory trip to AC that had been hanging on appears to have closed for good. Anyway, I had a real love/hate relationship with AC. Every trip I vowed would be my last because I hated the place as AC itself was absolute shite! Then, back I would go on the next "mates from Pattaya behaving extremely badly" trip because collectively we had such a good time. If you are on your own I would cancel your flights to Manila and go to Phnom Penh instead. I am only saying that because I want somebody to report back on what P P is like these days. 🤣

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You are being a bit hard on her! Perhaps she was captured as a child by Apache's and always thought she was the real deal. She was dead fit as Buffet the vampire🧛‍♂️

The tap has an arm which I must have hit when I threw the shampoo bottle and thus somehow turned the tap on. At the time, I did not notice the tap had turned on as I was too busy congratulating myself on landing in the washbasin, shutting the shower curtain and getting under the hot shower! 🤣 The overflow must be partially blocked somehow because the water flow in overwhelmed the water flow out!

I managed to create a perfect storm in my bathroom yesterday. Having finished all the usual activities I carry out every day involving my washbasin, I walked away from it leaving the plug still in the sink. Something I would never do normally, however I had found that I needed to take out and clean again one of my contacts and I always have the plug in the sink, just in case. Error number one! I have a walk in shower with glass panels and a door which is only waist high but some way from the effective range of the shower head. Nevertheless, I have a shower curtain which stretches the whole length of the shower. I have a seat in the shower on which I found I had left an empty large bottle of shampoo and the full one I had replaced it with yesterday. Not wishing to chance leaving the empty bottle behind, yet again, I picked it up. I then pulled back the shower curtain sufficient that I could lean out over the door and toss the empty bottle into the washbasin for subsequent disposal. Error number two! Unknown to me, the empty shampoo bottle on its way to the washbasin had clipped the arm of the cold tap and turned on the cold water. Meanwhile, I had my shower and then spent a few enjoyable minutes sitting on the seat with the hot water cascading over me, as I liked doing from time to time. Eventually, maybe 10 minutes or so later, I threw back the shower curtains to find my bathroom, with its various carpets, under an inch or so of water. It had also travelled into the hall but not as bad as there is a low raised "lip" as you enter the bathroom. The washbasin's overflow had simply been overwhelmed or, maybe, didn't work at all. Moral of the story is don't be lazy. 😀

I regularly use Wise and find sometimes they ask for an OTP to be completed but most times they do not. Such requests appear to be random. They also use WhatsApp to communicate. Personally, with the exception of daily video calls with Sai using Line, virtually all of my regular personal phone calls these days are on WhatsApp. For the first time ever, I used a second sim card in my phone for my trip in November. It took about 10 minutes on my way out of Swampy being a 30 day AIS sim. Worked just as it was supposed to but most of my calls were still either WhatsApp or Line.

Arsenal's reward for losing to Newcastle? Twice! Off to Dubai to top up the sun tan.

Got any souvenir rocks that glow in the dark?

I purchased an Exercise bike from Amazon and have been using it for the last three weeks. It is really solid and the wee screen gives a lot of information including speed, pulse rate, time etc. It cost £139 and I am really pleased with the quality. The description in Amazon stated it was 70% assembled and would take 30 minutes to complete. Considering it took me that long to get it out of the box and its individually plastic wrapped components, that proved to be wishful thinking. Monitoring one's pulse rate whilst in use I found really helpful. On delivery, I opened my front door to find the Amazon agent was standing there holding this very large cardboard box in her arms. She, and it was a girl, asked me If I would like her to bring it into my condo. I declined saying just leave it outside whilst she took a delivery photo as they sometimes do. I watched her walking down the hallway, as you do, and then bent down to pick the box up. It was so heavy I gave up trying to lift it and had to drag it into the condo. This was the same box she had carried along two hallways and up a flight of stairs! 🤣

I once lost 70K baht for two return flights from Bangkok to the UK for Sai and I from an Agent in Pattaya Tai who closed up walking off with my money. Having booked flights previously with the same Agent I had no reason to believe there might be a problem. After that I always booked flights direct with the Airline.

I was on my annual golfing holiday with friends, basing ourselves as usual in Bournemouth. We walked into the golf club's packed Bar after finishing our round, only to find it was so quiet you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. Everyone was glued to the TV in the corner and it was obvious something momentous had happened. Just what, we had no idea, and it took some time for my brain to catch up with my eyes.