[Sir Burr]

Have been checking out this forum and have been looking at a few of the threads. Seems that most of the posters don't live in the LOS, but try to get here as often as they can.
I have lived in Phuket for twenty years and have been in SE Asia for twenty four years. I arrived when I was twenty-two and am now nearly fourty-seven.
I was a monger until I was thirty-nine. Here are a few things I picked up on the way:-

1. Too many people think that because thay have been here X amount of years, that they know more than somebody who has been here less time.
This is absolute crap. I had a friend that stayed in Phuket. After three years, he knew every influential Thai on the island from the governer down. He could also speak better Thai than me, knew all the best restaurants and was first with the local goings on.

2. Learn some spoken Thai. You will get more respect and admiration. Things will become cheaper as their are four prices for most things. They are for:- Local Phuket people, other Thais, farangs that speak Thai, all other farangs.

3. If you do decide to marry a Thai, don't wait too long.
Once you are in your forties and your looks are going and your flesh starts heading south, it will become more and more likely that a girl will stay with you for one reason only. Money. If you are happy with that, fine.

4. The advice of not marrying a bar-girl is generally true, though there are plenty of exceptions (me for example). The success rate of BG / farang marriages is maybe one in five. If you take the girl back to your country, the odds get even worse. If you move to Thailand the odds get better. Thais are like fine wines, in general, they don't travel well.
Also, most of the sucessful marriages are not with the stunners. They are far too up themselves and too selfish to make a marriage work.

5. You will never understand in full the idea of "face". This idea runs through the whole of Thai society and more often than not, dictates Thai peoples thoughts and actions. The whole idea of face is to glue Thai society together. Cohesion and consensus is valued more than truth.
The longer I stay here, the more I'm convinced that I know bugger all.

6. Even if you are seething with anger, never show it if you are dealing with Thai people. If you do, you will lose their respect and the problem will just get bigger. Keep smiling and use a soft voice (yes, I know this is virtually impossible at times).

7. Never sacrifice your future for the present. There are two types of farang that live in Thailand. Those that will be here for as long as they want, and those that will be forced home through lack of money. I have had close friends that have had to go back to the UK after staying in Phuket for twelve years or more. Once they are back, they don't adjust well.
It takes an awful lot of money to stay in Phuket. Don't sell up the home and make the permanent move to Thailand. If you fail and have to go home, at best you will have a big hole in your CV which employers don't like; at worst you will be too old to get a good job. Getting old is bad enough, being old AND poor is unthinkable. Better to keep making money in your home country and retire here when you have enough. US$400,000 would be the absolute minimum.

8. Thailand is like an ice-berg. What you see is only 10%. The other 90% is not visible.

9. Have fun, party hard, you only live once.