Discontent with expat life in Thailand

[Pleng]

Why do they fill crisp packets up with air here ? Never quite got that . There are deffinately less crisps in the bags . Maybe the air ads weight .......

Where have you come from? I left the UK 9 months ago and filling crisp packets had been pretty much common practice over there for the last 10 years or so.

[Arcadian]

The Lays crisps in Arabia are lovingly, gently sauteed in olive oil by dusky Bedouin maidens. Walkers are deep fried in vegetable oil in a factory on the outskirts of Leicester.

[J.J.B.]

Why do they fill crisp packets up with air here ? Never quite got that . There are deffinately less crisps in the bags . Maybe the air ads weight .......

Where have you come from? I left the UK 9 months ago and filling crisp packets had been pretty much common practice over there for the last 10 years or so.

My understanding was that crisp packets were filled with Nitrogen to stop them going off, so presumably more of that could mean a longer shelf life?

With respect to the grumpy ex-pats, I'm a fairly grumpy ex-pat living in Italy where there is - apparently - a vibrant 'café culture' and alcohol is also mighty cheap. But since the Italians don't really drink and they certainly don't like to be seen drunk in public as it might ruin their 'bella figura' (or love of posing to put it another way) there's a very low tax on it too. One thing I do appreciate here as a result is that there are no gangs of fired-up youths looking to hurl abuse at anyone going past them, there's a much greater respect for people and I've never felt threatened when out and about; unlike the UK.

Retirement, although a far-off dream for me, might make me feel grumpy if I had nothing to do but be reminded that I'm old but in the LOS...surely not!

[margaretcarnes]

Why do they fill crisp packets up with air here ? Never quite got that . There are deffinately less crisps in the bags . Maybe the air ads weight .......

Where have you come from? I left the UK 9 months ago and filling crisp packets had been pretty much common practice over there for the last 10 years or so.

There was actually a survey done a month or so back in the UK on the crisp count per pack of the leading brands! Can't tell you the results because I hardly ever buy them. At least not since 3 months ago when I was charged a whacking £1 for a small packet of crisps in my local and had to be scraped up off the floor.

[Lev]

Please.

Start a new one on snack foods if you must.

[midlandmike]

I certainly do learn new things from the forum.
I never realized that snack foods were such an important factor in British peoples lives.

[Roel]

Lev allow me to end this with a last remark. J.J.B. is correct: nitrogen, not oxygen. But not to keep them fresh longer. Oxygen would make them soft. Think of the crisps still on the table the morning after! Something that is not very appropriate for a product called crisps. The content would fit in a bag a quarter of the size they are in. Nothing to do with misleading (for a change). Just creating a buffer with the nitrogen so you not end up with a bag of crumbs. Nuff said, otherwise the thread should be renamed Discontent with Crisps. As during my typing Lev already said.

Interesting observation about Italians. In a previous life a ran a cafe in Holland and most of my customers were university students. Quite a few Italians among them. Now that you mention it I cannot recall seeing any of them really drunk whereas some of the Dutch students I have never seen sober.

Back to topic. Personally I am very happy with my life here. As a Dutchman through the years I probably socialized more with different nationalities than Brits tend to do. A natural thing I guess. For Brits in many situations there are countrymen around and these are a more or less logical first choice. I can assure you that ALL nationalities have their fair share of grumpy and discontent representatives. Perhaps this forum gives the impression it is the Brits because they are statistically over-represented. I have been a regular in the German community in Hua Hin back in the 90's and man do they have grumpy ones. In Pattaya I frequented a Dutch restaurant: grumpy Dutch there! In Chiang Rai I socialized a lot in a Swiss community: same same there. Now in Phuket my employer is Belgian and that results in me meeting a lot of Belgians. Guess what?

[Rider]

I would advance as a point for discussion an observation that I have made after talking to many resident ex-pats in Hua Hin.
I seem to detect among the ex-pats from Britain a level of discontent higher than in those from other countries. The aggravations of life in Thai, so well documented in the forum, seem to upset them greatly.
If this is true there could be many reasons. British ex-pats seem to retire here earlier in their life than others and those that have been here for several years have seen their frozen pensions diminish from 72b/£ to its present level. A loss of 30% and thats before inflation.
There seems, however, to be another factor—whereas the Europeans, Americans and Commonwealth ex-pats feel that return to their own country is always there as an attractive option, my British friends appear not to like that idea.
One gentleman said something that I thought was telling, he said
“I could happily return to a Britain as it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s or even early 80s, but I do not feel that the Britain of today is a place where I would like to live. My Britain has gone.”
Any comments?

The UK is finished so their feelings are entirely understandable.
Their generation only have themselves to blame, along with the sell-out government who chose greed over nationality.

If they think it's bad, consider the Generation Ys, Zs and Us that now have to inherit the mess of the UK now!
Thank goodness I'm between generations and have a chance to get out!

[Bristolian]

I would advance as a point for discussion an observation that I have made after talking to many resident ex-pats in Hua Hin.
I seem to detect among the ex-pats from Britain a level of discontent higher than in those from other countries. The aggravations of life in Thai, so well documented in the forum, seem to upset them greatly.
If this is true there could be many reasons. British ex-pats seem to retire here earlier in their life than others and those that have been here for several years have seen their frozen pensions diminish from 72b/£ to its present level. A loss of 30% and thats before inflation.
There seems, however, to be another factor—whereas the Europeans, Americans and Commonwealth ex-pats feel that return to their own country is always there as an attractive option, my British friends appear not to like that idea.
One gentleman said something that I thought was telling, he said
“I could happily return to a Britain as it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s or even early 80s, but I do not feel that the Britain of today is a place where I would like to live. My Britain has gone.”
Any comments?

The UK is finished so their feelings are entirely understandable.
Their generation only have themselves to blame, along with the sell-out government who chose greed over nationality.

If they think it's bad, consider the Generation Ys, Zs and Us that now have to inherit the mess of the UK now!
Thank goodness I'm between generations and have a chance to get out!

I somehow understand your feelings BUT…..Your perspective is not the same as many others who still believe that the UK is a great country. Is the UK, like most western countries, in yet another period of change; certainly yes!

The UK has been subject to change for the whole of written history and has grown though all of these changes. The choice of, do you want to live there, or elsewhere is for you to decide and you have been given the rights, freedom and probably the education to take advantage of the preference of where you would like to live by your parents. Earlier generations, for the most part, did not have your choices.

I elect to live in Thailand, my work; my family and my personal preference drive my selection of where is best for me. In different circumstances I would have no problem living in the UK

However, as to your comment:

“Their generation only have themselves to blame, along with the sell-out government who chose greed over nationality”.

A little crass maybe, but the words of a well known song written by Michael Rutherford (Mike and the Mechanics come to mind)

“Every generation blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears”

Happy New Year

[usual suspect]

Was this post intended to get all serious & deep..?
I'm with BB on this one a little bit...as I get older I find whinging about everyday stuff & goings-on here in the LOS comes to me very easily.
Us Brits need summat to grumble about..and around here we don't have to look very far each day..
"wot about using ya f****n indicators ya stoopid cow, are'nt ya thumbs long enuf to reach that switch?!"
(Sorry 'bout that..she made me hit the brakes while I'm typing this )

We forget all to easily that we've been brought up in a law-abiding society..to which we have adhered to since our school-days..(right up to our graduation to that 'approved school')..

As we get older sense & sensibility set in naturally, thus making it harder to accept the semi-lawless state we now find ourselves living in here..(who refered to HH as Dodge city?..oh yes ME!).

And THAT my darlings is maybe..(in a round-a-bout way) why I always seem happy to rant on here..
Cos I'm grumpy, bitchy, moody..& cos I can..555!

[margaretcarnes]

I would advance as a point for discussion an observation that I have made after talking to many resident ex-pats in Hua Hin.
I seem to detect among the ex-pats from Britain a level of discontent higher than in those from other countries. The aggravations of life in Thai, so well documented in the forum, seem to upset them greatly.
If this is true there could be many reasons. British ex-pats seem to retire here earlier in their life than others and those that have been here for several years have seen their frozen pensions diminish from 72b/£ to its present level. A loss of 30% and thats before inflation.
There seems, however, to be another factor—whereas the Europeans, Americans and Commonwealth ex-pats feel that return to their own country is always there as an attractive option, my British friends appear not to like that idea.
One gentleman said something that I thought was telling, he said
“I could happily return to a Britain as it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s or even early 80s, but I do not feel that the Britain of today is a place where I would like to live. My Britain has gone.”
Any comments?

The UK is finished so their feelings are entirely understandable.
Their generation only have themselves to blame, along with the sell-out government who chose greed over nationality.

If they think it's bad, consider the Generation Ys, Zs and Us that now have to inherit the mess of the UK now!
Thank goodness I'm between generations and have a chance to get out!

If working full time for almost 40 years, paying into an occupational pension scheme, buying my own property, and buying British whenever possible, has led to me actually being worse off in retirement than those on benefits then yes - I guess I must have contributed to the downfall of the UK!
So my apologies to the generations Y, Z and U who won't get off their backsides to help themselves.

[Takiap]

No matter what country you live in, you will always find things to moan about. When I was still living in SA, I moaned, when I was living in the UK I moaned, and now that I'm living in LOS I still moan. However, I tend to moan a lot less these days because in my opinion, there just less for me to moan about. In fact, I can't remember moaning about anything for at least one and a half to two months. My last moan was triggered by seeing awful grey skies every damn day, but now with the rainy season over, I once again have nothing to moan about.


My take on things is that you get people who come here on holiday; they fall in love with the place, and then they come and live. At first, all the strange and quirky things that make Thailand the place it is, tends to keep new comers amused. You can often spot these people because they walk around with a permanent smile on their faces. This period of grace ( ) can last 6 months, or it can last 6 years, but at some point, those rose tinted glasses either fade or fall off completely. At that point, things which once amused you now begin to irritate you, and so the moaning begins. For some, life here becomes almost unbearable. Others manage to get through this "grey" phase, and then they can once again appreciate the fact that they're living here, along with all the craziness.

Not sure how others feel about this, but this is how I would describe my own life in Thailand. Fortunately for me, I got through the "grey" phase, and these days it really takes a lot to get me upset. Sure I still moan from time to time, but that's only to be expected unless I can find another pair of rose tinted glasses, and they would really need to have a VERY dark tint.


In a nutshell........I know where I want to live.





PS: Just ignore any typos because I can't be bothered with proofreading.

[PeteC]

I'm about the same and have been for a long time. The only thing I'll never get over is the stupidity of some people, 100% preventable by better education and better parenting. I know, you find that in every country but here it's compacted into a smaller and more visible space. Pete

[J.J.B.]

I'm about the same and have been for a long time. The only thing I'll never get over is the stupidity of some people, 100% preventable by better education and better parenting. I know, you find that in every country but here it's compacted into a smaller and more visible space. Pete

Are you referring to Thailand or the UK, education and parenting reference are too similar?!

I think it's difficult for Brits (or most Westerners) to get out of the need to compete with each other. We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like. We may put on a pair of rose-tinted specs to view our new home as 'idyllic' but if we still have a jaundiced eye, it will never look quite right.

When I first came here, not so long ago, one of the things I was told about Thais was that they don't worry about what they can't control. Simple, but wonderful if you can get it right and so different from the Western world where we believe we can or should be able to control everything. Although a generalisation, because the exception proves the rule, the Thais have discovered the secret to happiness: acceptance.

Brits who cannot accept what's going on in Thailand or anywhere else for that matter, will not be happy and will, therefore, grumble. And we also excel at grumbling, it's a national pastime and helps protect us from the worst effects of government - especially meddlesome European government - the weather, football team results, taxation, health, etc. but doesn't result in any positive action. It's only when we're really threatened, by aggressors in Europe, South America and elsewhere, that we act and in that moment people realise that our bite is much worse than our bark.

I really don't know what generation I'm from but I love the notion of being "between generations", it sounds very Star Trek!

[margaretcarnes]

JJB - one of the most liberating things for me while in Thailand was the total absence of that need to compete. It was good to leave Western materialism behind. Expats treated each other pretty much equally - without needing to know what they did before, or how much they earned etc. It didn't matter because we were all where we were with a common aim, which was to live peacefully in a beautiful place, with friendly people and a good climate.
OK for official stuff we needed to make an effort, but otherwise we could live pretty much as we wanted with no judgement or pressure. Expats didn't need swimming pools, wallpaper or pedigree dogs, and no-one was looked down on for not having - or wanting - those things.
About 10 years ago that started to change. HuaHin began to go more upmarket as a retirement destination. People moved in who demanded the best of the West. Then retirement visa regs were tightened.
All of that is of course good for the economy of HH, but it has also IMO created a micro class divide between expats there. The result is what we see now - many of the longer term expats simply moved further out - partly due to increasing prices in the town centre - but also because the whole feeling of the place has changed, and it is no longer the place they chose to live.
There is really little wonder that some are not content with the change.