I’ve been here ten years now. Left Iowa in 2012 and always thought something would bring me back, but nothing did. Lost a lot by not making better plans. Lost houses, everything I had in storage…in the long run, who cares? Not even me.
Here’s what the vegetation looks like around Chiang Mai.
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just sayin’
Bloom where you’re planted
If you were born with a surfeit of talent in one area, then you’re obligated to develop that facility to the best of your ability. You can’t just hang out and slide by. You need to apply yourself daily. Your talent was a gift, and you owe it to the rest of us to use it.
Of course, it your talent is for torturing animals or compulsive lying, then that previous statement doesn’t apply. It would be better for you to keep a low profile. No reason to break a sweat.
Some of us were born to lead, to make great changes for the better, while others were put here to hang out. Remember, for every leader there needs to be a group of followers. Sometimes that group can grow very large. Think of Trump or Hitler.
As museums go, it was a real sleeper. Somebody had walked off with all the portable instruments, and the piano and organ were covered with mold. But I enjoyed the setting, nestled deep in several vacant lots.
The groundskeeper was neither talkative nor helpful, but he did cast a menacing air that might curb further vandalism.
There was a lunchroom just down the road where the food was as cheap as one could hope for in these uncertain times.
Apparently, the museum’s director is a graduate of Moscow State University, but when he returned to his home country for “continuing education” he was never seen again.
I’ve heard his wife took it pretty hard, and is now housed in a nearby rest home, at the end of the one of the vacant lots.
The Land of Smiles, they call themselves
Rained a lot on the way there, not at all the next day coming home. No tourists yet. All the hotels empty.
When you’re surrounded by other people your own age and race, it gets clubby real fast. Assumed common values speed consensus and nobody thinks twice about offering an opinion. Here in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I have as many expat friends as I did my fellow students at University of Missouri. We all despised the Vietnam war and dreaded being sent against our will to the very region I now inhabit voluntarily.
Instead of eating army rations, I eat Thai food in incredibly affordable restaurants. My social security pension allows me a life of leisure. Since this is a Buddhist country and theft is rare, I spend little time worrying about my personal safety, though every day finds me riding a motorcycle through insane traffic, a clear and present danger, but rampaging scooters don’t hold a candle to mortar rounds or sniper fire.
Like all grumpy retirees, we like to complain…
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geezersabroad 