Thailand - Travel with Rick

Ever dreamed of packing your bags and living in a vibrant country like Thailand? We're joined today by our special guest, Rick, an American traveler who has been doing just that for the past few months. He's got some fantastic insights to share about long-term visa options for Thailand and tips on making the move as smooth as possible.

This episode is packed with a variety of engaging topics - from the unique attractions of each Thai region to the affordable cost of living and the quality of life it offers. Rick takes us through the hustle of Bangkok, the peacefulness of Chiang Mai, and the southern charm of the country. If you're a beach lover, you'll be thrilled as we discuss the breathtaking islands of Koh Samui,  Ko Pha-ngan, and Koh Lipe. We also touch on the practical aspects of living in Thailand, such as the transportation system, food safety, and even ways to access your money.

Finally, we dive into the richness of Thailand's culinary culture and the local music scene. So tune in, and let's embark on this Thai adventure together!

Map of Thailand

Chapters

• 0:15 Thai Long-Term Visa Options
• 11:58 Thailand's Geography and Chiang Mai
• 16:17 Living in Thailand
• 24:44 Big Island Beach Tourism
• 34:42 Beauty of Koh Lipe and Nearby Islands
• 42:06 Transportation and Food Safety in Thailand
• 48:55 Food, Music, and Money

Transcript

Carol or Kristen 0:15

Hi, welcome to our podcast. We're Next Travel with Kristin and Carol. I am Kristin and I am Carol, and we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure. In each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next. Today, I'm very excited to share. We are joined by Rick, who I have been working with for the last 11 years. Rick is an American who has been traveling around Thailand for the last few months and shares his thoughts on what makes Thailand so special to him. We talk about how to arrange visas for a long-term stay, where to go, how to get around, the level of English needed to get by and more Enjoy. Welcome, Rick. I was just curious. So it's 9 am here and you said it's midnight Midnight there. It's actually 11 at night.

Rick 1:05

here it's usually when I work. Yeah, I usually work at night. Wow, so what's your?

Carol or Kristen 1:10

and it's so funny because I have questions also for people who want to work remotely and would want to go to Thailand. Me included because that sounds amazing. So I can't wait to hear about all this, because that will be a plan for me, for sure. But what are your? What is your typical day, or I guess I'd say your 24 hours look like.

Rick 1:32

I have tried a number of different things. I've been over here for five months now and when I first came over I was kind of going to bed a little earlier than I do now, which would mean going to bed at you know, one or two am. Now I've been going to bed at like three or four am. I have tried a schedule where I was working a couple of hours in the morning every day and when I was doing that I wound up working a lot more in the afternoons and then very little in the middle of the night. That was kind of fun for a minute, you know. It got me up in the mornings and I was more of a morning person and I, you know, kind of did more morning activities. But in the end it just really stretched me thin.

Rick 2:15

So right now the way my schedule works is I usually try and sleep in just as late as I can, and occasionally I get lucky and I'm able to sleep until like 11 or 1130 or something like that. Those are usually my best days. Usually I try to get a couple of hours in before my shift starts, which would be like my shift is basically six at night until two in the morning, but I don't want to work a complete, solid eight hours through that, and you know I want to have some sort of a lunch break and a little bit of a normal life during the eight hour period as well. So I try to get a little bit of work done during the day at some point, you know so that I'm not just sitting there working for eight hours straight. So you know, usually that's a couple of hours in the late afternoon. Ideally, I think the way to do this, at least for my situation, would be to sleep a couple of hours in the afternoon every day in like the afternoon.

Rick 3:11

And then yeah, the siesta. I think that would really be ideal and then try to get to bed at like two or three in the morning and I think I'd be pretty happy with that. I just can't seem to get consistent enough with it, and part of that is just kind of the logistics of it. We end up going to a new place nearly every weekend. We've been to just so many different spots and some of it is by choice and some of it's by necessity because of the visa situation and other family issues and stuff. My girlfriend has kids and so you know there's just a lot of different things that go on. So my schedule isn't as consistent as it could be if I were just stuck in one place doing the same thing every day.

Rick 3:56

But that's okay, I'm happy with it.

Carol or Kristen 3:59

Such great info because my girlfriend, they're selling their house and they have a i house in in our here, with her and her husband and her kids. Her youngest daughter just started San Luis Obispo and her oldest graduated, so they're looking to live in the summers at Lak E in our and then travel the world the rest of the time and work remotely. But you think visa is right. I mean, I think during COVID maybe there was some a little easier. I think people were trying to, although it was harder because COVID, of course, but you romanticize travel and was curious, and then I definitely want to spend most of the time on Thailand, but in terms of the visa situation, what does that look like?

Rick 4:39

So, basically, the way the visa situation works is it's a little bit complicated, but I'll just try and sum it up the best I can. So you have a few different options. So one of the best ways to do it if you're planning to stay for a while is to apply for a visa before you leave your home country, and then you could apply for a much longer visa, something like a 60 day or maybe even a six month visa. It requires you to go through a little bit more paperwork and it does take a while to get the visa, but then, once you have it, then you don't have to worry about it so often. Any visa that you get can be renewed once for 30 additional days. So if you wind up with a 60 day visa, you can just go to the immigration office when it's about to expire, pay about 60 bucks and you'll get a new visa.

Rick 5:30

The other way you can do it in the way that most people do it if they're coming for a short trip, is you just use a visa exemption, and so if you're coming from one of the major Western countries, there's a list of countries that are approved for this, and so most of the major Western countries. Maybe all of them are on that list, including the United States. So previously you were able to get 45 days. They just recently changed that back, in the end of March or beginning of April, so now it's 30 days, and so you don't need a visa. They just give you a visa exemption as soon as you arrive at the airport. That gives you 30 days in the country.

Rick 6:08

You can go and renew that pretty much at any point you want and get an additional 30 days, and so then, at that point then you've got to look at leaving the country and coming back or potentially applying for a different type of visa. So you could get a visa, maybe if you wanted to go to school, in which case you would need to pay the school. Sign up for three, six, nine or 12 months is usually how it works. There's a lot of different things you could study, including, like Muay Thai Thai cooking, all sorts of different stuff. That's not just the Thai language, but that's generally what people do. If English isn't your first language, you could even sign up for English classes and go to school to learn English in Thailand.

Carol or Kristen 6:54

Wow.

Rick 6:55

Once you've paid your tuition, the school will work with immigration to get you a visa to match your program. You still need to renew the visa every 30 or every 90 days, I'm sorry and so you'll have to pay another 60 bucks and go to the immigration office, but usually it's just a couple of hours, depending on which office you're going to. So that would be one way to do it if you want to stay for a longer period of time. But the other thing is you can do is you can just leave the country. So you come in originally on a 30 day exemption, you go and you get that renewed for another 30 days. Now you've got 60 days and then if you leave the country and come back, you'll get another 30 days and then that can be renewed for an additional 30 days. So you can keep doing that for a while.

Rick 7:41

But the general rule is you're only supposed to do two land entries over the course of a year, and so just going to a neighboring country like Laos or Malaysia and just coming right back in, you can do that twice. So that gives you six months right there, but more than twice in a period of a year they start to frown on it and you risk being denied, and so that could really interrupt your travel plans, if you wind up denied and you wind up having to fly out of this other country that you didn't expect to be in for a long period of time, and so the other option then is to fly, and so, as long as you arrive in Thailand from another country by air, there's no limit in theory as to how many times you can come back.

Carol or Kristen 8:32

So the six month visa how complicated is that? Is that like you have to go for education? Or it just costs more money or it just takes longer to get a background check?

Rick 8:42

Yeah, there's a couple of different steps you have to go through. I think I can't remember exactly the reason why I wasn't that interested in it, but I think part of it is a police clearance. I believe is one of the things that you need to provide is you have to have like an actual letter from. I think you have to have one maybe from your state or from the federal government, and then you have to have one from your local police department as well. So you have to do that outside the country. That's another thing with the longer visas. So the 60 day or the six month visa, you can't.

Rick 9:22

I am not 100% sure on this, but the way it works is you have to be out of the country to apply for any of those, and so recently I went to Laos and applied for a visa there and got a 60 day visa, and so that's one of the kind of the headaches of it. So, if you're planning your trip from your home country though you know it's not really a big deal because you tend to have a lot of lead time on that and so you can get all your visa stuff in order before you ever come.

Carol or Kristen 9:52

Quick question too. So if you get a six month visa, let's say, you know, I think I'm going to spend six months in Thailand, and I get there and I'm like, oh, I want to go check out Indonesia I'm just looking at the map right now Philippines, Singapore, I want to, you know, go and check that out in that six month time. Well, I guess you could go, come back.

Rick 10:11

Or well, I guess you can just leave and come back, and it's yeah, that's part of the things that you have to consider when you're thinking about how to do this, because, like, the 60 day visa is a single entry visa. That's what I've got right now that I just got in in Laos a couple of weeks ago. It's a single entry and so it's. It was good, I think, for two or three months, one from the time of issue. I could use it at any point, but it actually doesn't start until you enter the country. So I could have just hung out in Laos, could have gone anywhere I wanted, and then, as soon as I came in, that 60 days starts running.

Rick 10:48

But it's a single entry. Once you leave, it's finished and you'd have to apply for another one or come in another way, and so I think the six month visas are all multiple entry, I believe. So that's one of the other benefits of doing it that way is you're able to just, you know, come and go as you please. So it really pays to have a plan, I think. Personally, I don't really worry about it, because it's been fun going to Malaysia and to Laos and it's been, you know, just a personal challenge.

Carol or Kristen 11:17

You're stealing it.

Rick 11:18

Yeah, yeah, going through the logistics of how do you get to Laos and what do you do there, and you know to come back and go through the whole rigmarole because it's usually at least a full day of travel to get from one major destination to another, you know.

Carol or Kristen 11:34

No high speed trains in Thailand.

Rick 11:36

There are no high speed trains in Thailand. There actually is one in Laos that just opened recently, though.

Carol or Kristen 11:41

That is amazing. Laos, Wow very ery ery ery undeveloped country.

Rick 11:45

But yeah, China built a very fast train there. That's just really quite remarkable compared to all the other countries around here.

Thailand's Geography and Chiang Mai

Carol or Kristen 11:53

Wow, very interesting. All right, so let's get into. So where, what cities have you been at in so far?

Rick 12:01

in Thailand, oh, my goodness, I have been all over the place. I have been from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, to Chiang Rai. I have been down in the south. We went to G, we went to A , Nang Nang Nang Lanta, we went to K AN Samui AN dirty typo was down the yeah, and spent some time in Sulat Tani and, Surat yeah Thani I've just been all over the place. I've even been up in the north. We went to Konken and Pizana and P L Petroboon and Pichit many places.

Rick 12:47

So many places yeah.

Carol or Kristen 12:49

It's interesting because I never knew how landlock ed Thailand s is. But then I'm looking and it kind of seems like it's all the way down the whole peninsula, Is that?

Rick 12:59

right, that's right.

Carol or Kristen 13:02

Until it hits like Malaysia, kind of like Yin-Yangs with Malaysia.

Rick 13:07

And with Burma. Initially it comes down from the south. Burma and Thailand both share that long. I don't know if it's an Isthmus or a peninsula, and then that turns into Malaysia.

Carol or Kristen 13:20

Yeah.

Rick 13:21

And it comes on down.

Carol or Kristen 13:23

I never have really looked at it that way, because I first looked and I'm like, oh wait, I always think Thailand, of beaches, and I just saw this little piece and then I went oh wait a minute, it goes all the way around.

Rick 13:33

Oh yeah. There's a lot of beaches, a lot of beaches.

Carol or Kristen 13:37

Yeah, that's what I usually see, but it seems.

Rick 13:42

What's interesting is the majority of Thailand is landlocked, and up Is it more mountainous or there are several big mountain ranges, as well as some big fertile valleys and even a really large or at least one really large plateau. That probably is at least a quarter of the country, I would guess. That's where it's really a lot hotter and more arid, and I think it's probably the most poorest of the geographical areas as well. So there's a lot of variety, but, yeah, there's a lot of mountains as well. A lot of the coastal areas even are very mountainous too, which makes for some really great scenery.

Carol or Kristen 14:26

Yeah, what made you pick Thailand? I mean, it's kind of obvious, like gosh, it's so beautiful. I'm curious.

Rick 14:34

Yeah, I've done a ton of research on different countries around the world, so I have a laundry list of places I want to go, and the more I have researched, the more I think Thailand just fits the bill in every way shape and form. And the longer I stay here, the more I realize how good it is really compared to most anywhere, I think, especially in terms of value and convenience. I think, like consumer convenience, those are the things that are really hard to beat. Safety, I think, is another thing that's really hard to beat, especially for the price. Safety and value tend to be two things that don't usually go together so well. It's like the safer it is, the more expensive it is. Then the cheaper it is, the more dangerous. It's going to be Right and it really hits that sweet spot.

Carol or Kristen 15:32

Wow, it was good, you got it. You can go. What is it about Chiang Mai that I always hear like a lot of expats and digital nomads Like Chiang Mai is the favorite. What's special about Chiang Mai?

Living in Thailand

Rick 15:46

Chiang Mai. So Chiang Mai is interesting because it's a lot cooler than a lot of the other areas of the country, because it's up in the mountains. It also is a lot cheaper, and I think a lot of that is because it's the capital of the Northern area and so it's a lot more of a self-sustaining economy, so they're not dependent on imports and all that stuff, and so the inflation is not. I guess the cost of living there is a lot lower than other places because it's pretty sustainable.

Carol or Kristen 16:23

Wow Okay.

Rick 16:25

And so you just get a better quality of life. Things are a lot cheaper there and it's also it's missing a lot of the negatives of the big metropolitan area like Bangkok with. It doesn't have nearly as bad of traffic and just a lot of the negative things like that. It's a lot more of a walkable city and it's also really beautiful. It has just an absolute ton of temples, like several temples on every block I'm not even exaggerating, so it's really interesting like that. It's a very old city.

Carol or Kristen 17:00

Sounds amazing, yeah, I was curious also. It sounds like it's cost-wise. I'm curious about that, about well, I'll start with that. I've got lots of questions.

Rick 17:11

Yeah, cost-wise. So you can spend as little or as much as you want here. Pretty much, if you're really careful, you could be spending as little. Well, let's say, as a tourist, with not renting on a monthly basis but just paying by the week or something like that, you could be spending as little as $10 a day on a hotel room.

Carol or Kristen 17:40

Is it clean and it's fine.

Rick 17:43

It's not enough, but part of it, though, is you do have to kind of lower your standards a bit, which, for me. I've been here before, so it was no surprise to me, but there's just a few things that might really rub some people the wrong way. Like, typically especially at that $10 a night type of a cost the bathroom's going to smell bad. There's going to be like a smell of sewage that comes up through the pipes, and so, if you're lucky, you're not going to have that, but more normally, you probably will. There are a few things you could actually do about that, but if you stay here for a long time, you get used to it and you don't really care, because it's just you smell that just walking down the street as well.

Carol or Kristen 18:32

Oh God, I was going to ask what's the cost of the room that doesn't have the bathroom?

Rick 18:38

You know, you can spend a lot of money and still have that problem. It's like 25.

Carol or Kristen 18:42

Like, if you hit 25, then you're going to have to pay, it doesn't?

Rick 18:45

really work that way for the park, but it works more like that. I would say you know really the way around. That is, never book anything more than one night and ideally just go there first and see if it even is a place you want to stay and actually go into the room and just look around and see the things you don't see here. I will say, though, that you might think you would if you were traveling in another place, like, say, Florida are things like roaches? You're not really going to see that pretty much anywhere. You're not going to see anything that's really dirty or disheveled. No matter how low you go, pretty much everything is going to be clean and well taken care of. Probably everything's going to be in working order for the most part, and, like I said, safety is really not an issue, no matter where you go. You would really have to try to find an unsafe area in this country. I mean, you really have to try.

Carol or Kristen 19:50

Oh, that's great. How's the Wi-Fi?

Rick 19:51

The Wi-Fi is hit or miss, but luckily the cell service is amazing throughout almost the entire country, unless you're in a really remote area, which actually could be like a very populated island, like, say, g B, which is a big tourist destination, but there's just a ton of people there and there's not that many cell towers, and so, especially in the evenings when everybody goes back to their hotel room and starts streaming Netflix, the cell towers just get overloaded and you can probably sit there and watch Netflix with a little bit of buffer. But trying to make a video call on Zoom for work is not going to work out very well. But you can suffer through, which I've done, and it was OK. So I would say if you have your own business, probably not an issue, but if you're an employee, you might want to give some second thought to that one. It's really rare that I have experienced issues with my cell phone. I think that's pretty fair to say, right, carol? You would probably know more than I would.

Carol or Kristen 21:05

Yeah, no one has it. We've gone through some warning curves for sure.

Rick 21:09

Like it takes a while to get set up, we're in a VPN and we've got to get on the Wi-Fi and there's rebootings of the system, so yeah, yeah that's one of the things about being a digital nomad is you really do run into a lot of technical difficulties. That will take a lot of time and especially if you're an employee, you can't be clogging that onto your employer's clock. You've got to suck that up and deal with it, and a lot of times that is a tremendous amount of time, and it especially dealing with Wi-Fi. A lot of times Wi-Fi connections will just drop for no reason and just whatever reason. It just won't hold a connection and for that reason I tend to just use a hotspot instead, because it's a much more reliable connection and with very few exceptions have I ever found that the Wi-Fi was really all that much better generally faster than a phone, but for the most part it's a lot less stable.

Rick 22:13

So I've got now to where I tend to not even worry about whether the hotel has Wi-Fi. I often don't even bother logging in, I just run a hotspot all the time and then I know I have a stable connection. It's there's been maybe one or two times where the internet actually dropped for more than a minute or two that I've been here, with the exception of being in a remote area. It's just. It's not a thing In the United States, I mean. I think that the internet goes down, you know, for a few minutes, a couple of times a month.

Carol or Kristen 22:45

What are the beaches? So I got to get to the best part. That's what I mean. I would want to know is in living there. For how long have you been there now in total?

Rick 22:53

Five months.

Carol or Kristen 22:54

Five months, that's right, five months. And I see such a long coast and there's so much of Thailand and I definitely want to get your favorite spots and the best places, most beautiful beaches and bigger swatters and all the good stuff.

Rick 23:09

Yeah, every, every place has its pros and cons. You know, that's really the thing. There's no, there's no perfect place, and I think that's true probably globally as well. You know I think you guys are hearing that from the podcast Every place has its pros and cons, and so you know. That's good, though, because you know, you, you, the fun of it is figuring out what it is that you really care about.

Rick 23:35

What is it that you know really makes your heart flutter and makes you feel comfortable? And part of it, too, is like, you know, what are you trying to do? Are you just chasing novelty? Are you looking for new experiences? Are you looking for something that gets your heart pumping, or are you trying to find a place that feels like home and that feels comfortable and, you know, just relaxing, because those are usually not the same things. You know, a place that really gets you excited is not the same kind of place that you know you just want to hang out and relax in every day for a month. So you know, and your mood changes as well. So I think it's fun to just kind of go around to different places and kind of feel the vibe personally, and you know, I don't think that there's a lot of people here who would agree with this assessment, but personally I really like G Samui. It's pretty much got what I need and you know most.

Carol or Kristen 24:34

How do you spell it?

Big Island Beach Tourism

Rick 24:35

A K-O-H-S-A-M-U-I. So, yeah, pull that up on Google and take a look. So it's a big island and it's been a tourist hot spot for a long time and it's got a lot of different beaches, a lot of little small cities, and I've been to, I think, all of them. Yeah, I think I've been to all the cities on the island. I spent five weeks there, I think, and so every weekend we would move to another place, another city, and then during the week we would explore all the various beaches and different towns in that area. So I've seen the whole thing and it's got a really just a wide variety of different areas.

Rick 25:30

So part of it is what are you looking for? If you want a little bit of nightlife and being able to go to some bars or some clubs or listen to some live music, there's places for that. If you really want to have a variety of places to eat, if you want to be kind of doing the French Riviera, laying out on your chase lounge on the beach, listening to cool music along with a bunch of other people that look like you, there's places to do that. Or the place we stayed the longest was actually Mae Nam, which is a really laid back much less developed area, especially in terms of the beach. There's not a lot of big resorts and things like that comparatively, and the beach is just really beautiful. It's also lacking waves, so it's just really calm water, there's very few people and it also has a really nice little town associated with it, so you can just stay in town, walk to the beach in five minutes and you've got everything that you need right there.

Carol or Kristen 26:45

But there's really just too long. I was seeing this temple with a whole bunch of arms. There's like 30 arms out.

Rick 26:50

Yeah, been there, been there yeah.

Carol or Kristen 26:52

What's all the? Do you know what all the arms are?

Rick 26:55

Oh, I did at one point, but I don't mean that's okay. I've been to hundreds, yeah they all start to look alike after a while, to be honest.

Carol or Kristen 27:04

Oh, absolutely. And then it's interesting because that's like at the very end, almost touching what's the other country here, Malaysia, so it's kind of in the middle of the sea sort of. There's a whole bunch of little islands all there. Yeah, yeah, that's right, Are they all in there's? Well, there's some tiny, tiny ones, I don't know, it looks like you're on the biggest one. Are the other ones also inhabitable?

Rick 27:28

Yeah, there's two others that are also pretty famous Resort Islands. There's a , which is more of a backpacker type of place. That's where they have the big full moon party Once a month. About 20 or 30,000 young people mostly young people come there and, you know, do psychedelics and think to drink their hearts content.

Carol or Kristen 27:54

It's like a burning man, huh. What's that one called Rick.

Rick 27:58

It's the one above it.

Carol or Kristen 28:00

The one above Koh simoui, or is it not? Is it on Kosimoui or is it on a different island?

Rick 28:05

It's a different island. Yeah, it's right there in the same area. Oh, I see it.

Carol or Kristen 28:09

I see it, it's literally above it. Okay, gotcha K P K-O-P-H-A-N-G-A-N.

Rick 28:16

Yeah, okay, so t i a l. T w i. learning the language. It's a challenge, but it gets easier with time. Helps to have a friend or a girlfriend, in my case who doesn't speak English. At least initially, when we first met, she did not speak English and so but I so she's from there. Yeah, she's from here, yeah. Oh, that makes it much easier, but she now speaks English better than I speak Thai, so I'm a bit ashamed of that, I'll admit, but-.

Carol or Kristen 28:48

Oh, just give you something to work on, right.

Rick 28:51

Yeah, part of it, I think, is that English is a little bit quicker to learn, maybe at least to learn it badly. Let's say yeah. She doesn't speak English well, but I speak Thai horribly. All I can really do is just say phrases and things like that. I can barely even make a sentence.

Carol or Kristen 29:08

Yeah.

Rick 29:09

No one else can understand my sentences whatsoever, but she understands what I'm saying, so you know I can. We've kind of developed a Thai English English. Yeah, it's just this nasty mess of horribly broken language that only her and I understand and it doesn't work talking to anyone else, so when she tries to talk to other people in English, they don't understand her, and when I try to speak with other people in Thai, they don't understand me.

Carol or Kristen 29:37

But when I actually stick with vocabulary.

Rick 29:40

I know a ton of vocabulary and so you can actually. Thai's a pretty simple language, and so you can actually get your point across with it. Even though you have horrible grammar and most of your sentences is completely wrong, people can understand you if you persist enough.

Carol or Kristen 29:56

Right me drink.

Rick 29:58

Yeah, it's kind of like that. Right, if you can just get the pronunciation of those few words that you know correctly and say them in some sort of a context where people could understand why you would be putting those two words together, even though your sentence makes no sense then, you kind of get by yeah.

Carol or Kristen 30:17

Okay, what about Phuket? I see always there's always Thai restaurants, always called Phuket P-H-U-K-E -T. Did you go out there at all, or what's the? Draw of that place.

Rick 30:28

Yeah, so Phuket is the largest island and that is a major tourist center. It's also a whole province in itself, as well as a city, and so, yeah, that's a major tourist area. I so far have skipped it. I've been here four times and never gone. It's a lot of people say it's just overpriced and a lot of people love it, but I just the more I research it, the less interested I am in it. It does have some really lovely beaches. It's the best place to go surfing. But yeah, it's just a little bit. It's more expensive than most anywhere else and because it's so developed and has so many people, I just haven't really had a reason to go.

Carol or Kristen 31:20

I didn't even realize it was on the other. I was actually trying to find it but it wasn't. Again, just looking from a far satellite view here that it's on the. Oh my gosh. It says the Andaman Sea.

Rick 31:35

Andaman Sea, yeah.

Carol or Kristen 31:36

Andaman Sea, and then I had never even looked closely. Here I was also gonna ask a quick question and then I do wanna ask more about this. But going back to the Coast, mui, and then there was this Mu Kui Ang National Marine Park. That island looks incredible.

Rick 31:55

Yeah, there's a lot of just really beautiful national parks, especially these marine national parks. That's usually where all of the best beaches are. That's where the best snorkeling and the best diving is as well, but for the most part those aren't places you can usually stay.

Carol or Kristen 32:12

Yeah, you just go for the day.

Rick 32:14

Yeah, you go for the day. If you really wanna lay down the money, there's often ways to go there and stay, Whether it's like a sleep on a boat kind of situation, or you stay at the exclusive resort that actually is permitted to run and operate inside the national park, or whatever it is that you want. If you just are willing to pay for it, you can have it that way too. So if you really wanna have a beach to yourself, yeah, just spend the money and you can absolutely do that.

Carol or Kristen 32:45

But yeah, wow. And then I definitely have to touch on Phuket, even though, of course, I think it's probably a very popular place and it sounds like.

Rick 32:54

So you haven't been there yet I haven't been there, yeah okay, got it.

Carol or Kristen 32:57

Okay, I'm just looking at the pictures and there's temples. But yeah, I just think of the movie. There was a you know what was that Tidal Wave or something, but took it out or something to that effect. But beaches definitely look beautiful.

Rick 33:15

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Carol or Kristen 33:16

The rocks as well.

Rick 33:18

So but, I, didn't realize.

Carol or Kristen 33:20

I mean, I always thought it was an island and when you look at it from afar it actually doesn't look like an island. And then I looked and zoomed closer and saw oh, it looks like there is a bridge that goes.

Rick 33:30

It's a really big island, yeah, yeah.

Carol or Kristen 33:32

Yeah, huge, huge island. Just looks like the tip so, and then on the other side there looks like there's some other islands Ko Yao Ye.

Rick 33:43

Khan, something like that. Yeah, those are highly recommended. A lot of people say that you know you're really interested in Phuket and you don't wanna be in the overly touristed areas. You can go to some of these other outlying islands and, you know, have the beautiful scenery and, you know, be close enough to the, you know the central areas to have the consumer conveniences and things. But I haven't gone yet.

Carol or Kristen 34:12

Yeah, and it's interesting because, well, the pictures that I'm seeing here are kind of. They're all cloudy, so the water just looks regular. I grew up in E Beach and I'm always like where's the clearest water, so what?

Rick 34:24

would you say what?

Carol or Kristen 34:25

is the clearest water that's in Thailand.

Beauty of Koh Lipe and Nearby Islands

Rick 34:28

That you've heard of or been to. Yeah, I think and there's a few that are, I guess, on the top of the list that I haven't been to. One of the one probably the best I've Koh n n n i o Lipe Lipe pe. So if you search K-O-H-L-I-P-E, I stayed there for a week and that is absolutely beautiful, really really nice.

Carol or Kristen 34:55

That's two words K-O-H and then the separate words.

Rick 34:58

Yep, l-i-p-e yep.

Carol or Kristen 34:59

Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's the first picture.

Rick 35:02

That's it, I'm like oh wow, Really nice. And it's got, I don't know, eight or 10 beaches around the island. So you get a bit of a choice of what you'd like the scenery to look like.

Carol or Kristen 35:16

That's it. Thank you the whole island is walkable.

Rick 35:20

There's. I don't know if there even are any. I don't think there are roads on the island, there's just these walking paths to go from one area to the next.

Carol or Kristen 35:29

This is K-O-H-L-I-P-E.

Rick 35:33

That's right, yeah.

Carol or Kristen 35:34

And it has Satun Thailand. That's not right.

Rick 35:37

Satun, yeah, Satun, Okay so it's south of Phuket.

Carol or Kristen 35:42

Yeah, that's right, and an island, so you've been there on this trip.

Rick 35:44

Yeah.

Carol or Kristen 35:45

Wow, okay, you went way down there.

Rick 35:47

Oh yes, yep.

Carol or Kristen 35:49

That way, and so it's such a tiny little spot on, because it looks like this Langkawi yeah.

Rick 35:57

Langkawi as well. Langkawi is in Malaysia, so we did a jump from G B to Langkawi by boat. That's how we went, that's how we left the country to renew the our wealth.

Carol or Kristen 36:10

Oh, so you just went to that island.

Rick 36:12

Yeah, went from one island to the next, yeah.

Carol or Kristen 36:15

That's the way to do it. Yeah, Like well, that works. And then you're actually not going from land to land, you're going to water. Well, I don't know, I guess because it's touch is land to land with Malaysia, maybe they don't consider it, where I guess you have to do a plane ride right to make it. To make it count.

Rick 36:34

Yeah, that's correct. You only get two of those land border crossings a year, that's got it.

Carol or Kristen 36:40

Oh, and also with co-liepe. Is there surf there? It looks pretty calm.

Rick 36:45

I don't know if there's Don't think there's any surfing there now.

Carol or Kristen 36:49

Yeah, and then there's Tarotau National Park. That's next to it.

Rick 36:54

Uh-huh. You can see that from the beach. You can see all these different little islands as you're Coming in and then as you're leaving and sitting on the beach, you can see all these little tiny islands off in the distance and stuff. Absolutely beautiful, I mean, it is just postcard beautiful, every single day, all day long. It's just unreal. Wake up in the morning, you look outside and you're just like is this real, like this?

Carol or Kristen 37:20

It's beautiful.

Rick 37:21

It really is, and you get to see all the different shades of you know the how, the how it all looks, with different times of day and right if cloud cover, and oh, it's just stunningly beautiful.

Carol or Kristen 37:36

Like how much would it cost to stay there? Still like this range. You can do 10, 20 $50 a night, or is it?

Rick 37:45

Yeah, you definitely do have to spend a little bit more money. I want to say you could do it for $20 a night, though on the low end. Wow, we were probably doing more like 25 Just to be a bit more comfortable. But yeah, 25 or 30, it would be probably where most people would want to be.

Carol or Kristen 38:05

Mm-hmm, I mean, this is like Hawaii, right like Hawaii's 300 bucks a night, oh. Yeah, oh, as far as the beach goes, it's every bit as good as it gets, yeah well, you also have to fly to Thailand, so there's that cost to pin if you get a good Right there.

Rick 38:24

Go leave a. Yeah you, you see how far down it is like it's. You have to put a lot of time into even getting there. And then to get To the island itself, that's a two-hour High-speed boat ride, just to get, so no planes go there, or you just know you have to be in a boat, whoa.

Rick 38:42

Yeah, okay, you know it's. You get what you pay for. You know, if you want to, if you just want to go to Phuket, you can go there and just step off the plane and you're at the beach, but you're gonna be surrounded by a lot of people. I think most of those beaches there's are some exceptions. I, from what I've heard if you want to find a secluded beach, it's totally possible. But I think usually it's like, you know, you got to kind of drive out a little ways and then you got to like walk down this big cliff or something like that and you know, you got to go out of your way to really find, you know, the really beautiful stuff and that's probably Across the whole country or even the world.

Carol or Kristen 39:20

Yeah, p pe pe, and then it Pattaya up beach, ttaya.

Rick 39:27

Yeah, absolutely beautiful.

Carol or Kristen 39:30

Uh, beautiful waters. That's in the sunset.

Rick 39:33

There's a sunset picture. Yeah, there's a lot of really nice, you know little beach restaurants and stuff like that where you can just sit and, you know, look at the beach as you eat your meals throughout the week and it's just absolute paradise. It really is. It's really really pleasant.

Carol or Kristen 39:51

What I'm surprised about. Sorry, can I go to the weather?

Rick 39:54

Yeah, because it's so far out in the ocean you know you get all these ocean breezes and so it's not anywhere near as balmy and hot as other places, you know. So you get like a probably 15 degree you know reduction. Anytime you go out to one of these outer islands you know, like Samui for instance, it's for the most part going to be a lot Breezier and just feel it feels a lot less muggy for the most part.

Carol or Kristen 40:23

Nice. I was looking also at this Pattaya Beach on u pe. It's like there's a whole bunch of tall rises and buildings. I don't know if those are hotels or something, but there's a lot there. Actually I was surprised.

Rick 40:37

Um, there are two different places called P. Though there's, you may be looking at a different P.

Carol or Kristen 40:44

I clicked it from C, and then there's just yeah, there it looks like there's. I mean, they're kind of spread out, but I just expected it to be totally desolate. But then when I click on on C and P Beach and then I click on the photos, and the photos initially are just like we're just, you know, turquoise waters, sunset there, and maybe this is a different one, maybe they.

Rick 41:14

Because there's a there's a large city called P as well. Got it Okay, that's completely different than the beach that's called.

Carol or Kristen 41:21

Oh yeah, I see a P each. Well, it's, yeah, it's still. It's like in the selection of all the photos.

Rick 41:26

There's like 2000 photos and it says P Beach. But maybe yeah, they're. They're both the same name. Yeah, there's the same name.

Carol or Kristen 41:33

Okay, got it. Yeah, and I'm clicking through and that's gorgeous. This is really nice effort, but we are getting close to the end of our time, so, um, before we do the rapid fire, any other topic we need to talk about food at all, which is I was gonna ask food and and communicating, and it sounds like the people are wonderful, but you have your, your girlfriend, who speaks that, so I could imagine Thank goodness you have someone to and then getting around.

Carol or Kristen 41:59

Do you need a car? Is it accessible around? And all that good stuff.

Transportation and Food Safety in Thailand

Rick 42:03

Absolutely do not need a car, that is for sure. The transportation system here is amazing. Um, there's trains, there's buses. Um, there's taxis the equivalent of a Uber. Most people use a bolt or grab, which are basically just a different app, but does the same thing. Um, those are really more recommended than using a taxi, because it's more convenient, because you're using the app and you know the price before you go and there's no Negotiation or even discussion. Um, so that kind of cuts down on any sort of language issues you might have as well.

Rick 42:39

Um, the bus system is amazing. Um, you can go buy bus from any city in the country to any other city in the country with ease. Even if you go to a, the smallest place where no one speaks English, there's going to be people there that will get you where you need to go. You just have to be able to say I'm going here and they'll say, okay, well, you go over there and they'll speak to you and tie, and you won't know anything other than that they're telling you to go, stand over there, and you just stand there and you wait and Some guy will come by and say where are you going to? And you show them the ticket you just bought from the lady that sold it to you, and they'll say get on that bus right there. And so, yeah, you can go anywhere you want without knowing a bit of tie um, you know, like I said really, say you feel completely comfortable and everything is very reasonably priced.

Rick 43:28

So transportation is absolutely not an issue. They, and they do have um long Uh hall trains as well. We've done several train journeys Um, one was 14 hours, another was 12, another was eight, and uh, it's, it's very comfortable. Um, usually we get the air conditioned sleeper cars, which is going to cost you around, I don't guess, about 60 bucks each, something like that, for a you know, half day train ride, and during the day you're just sitting in this little like booth and then at night they they fold the bed up and then you have a little privacy curtain and you have a bed and and, um, you know, there's two people per little booth. And then, um, you know, you've got your private little bed and I sleep so well to the sound of the train you know hauling along. It's, it's been, it's got a on board restaurant and people walking through it every stop selling things and, uh, everything's clean, pretty modern, at least for this country it's, it's quite modern, very comfortable.

Carol or Kristen 44:36

And then food. You touched restaurant and food. Oh my god like you're not getting sick, kind of like Mexico or things, or is it uh safe to drink the water and those kinds of things?

Rick 44:47

yeah, so you know. The thing is is when you go to a developing country, you're probably going to get sick and it's probably going to happen within the first few days. Um, it's not going to happen to everybody, but it happens to most people, and it's really just your body adapting to different microorganisms that you're not used to.

Rick 45:08

Um and kind of the longer you delay eating normal street food that everyone else eats, um, then probably the more issues you're going to have with it. I would say to where you may have a lot of digestive issues for an ongoing period of time. Uh, on the other hand, if you get right in there and just start eating what everybody else is eating, you'll probably get sick in the first couple days and be finished with it for a long period of time. Um, I've been here for a long time and I've been sick maybe Twice. That I would call like real sickness, where you know lasted more than 12 hours or so. One time I was sick for About a solid day, about about 24 hours. Um, and it's interesting too, because sometimes Me and my girlfriend eat exactly the same meal and one of us will get sick and the other one doesn't.

Rick 45:55

And there's been a couple of times of that. So you know, is that food poisoning? Yeah, probably, but is it? You know the kind of food poisoning you're really thinking of, where, like anybody who would have eaten that, got sick? No, it's, it's just your body is has experienced too much of some particular thing. So for the most part, you can eat pretty much anything. It does pay to be diligent and kind of, you know, be smart about what you're eating, but there's the only things I would really recommend people avoid. Um, are anything that's any sort of raw meat. People do eat raw meat here sometimes and.

Rick 46:35

Uh, you really should not do that for various reasons. Um and it it's probably a good idea not to eat fish or seafood. Personally, most of the people that I know who spend a lot of time here Say that that's really it's not a good idea. You're just asking for trouble, that's not to say I know yeah. Like everything sushi and fish. I'd be eating that.

Rick 46:59

Well, the thing is is yeah, the thing is is that the waters here tend to be pretty polluted for the most part, especially the places where they're fishing right, because they're those are the major populated areas, and so, uh, you know the sanitation and uh, you know the uh, municipal sanitation is not at the same level as, you know, western countries, and so a lot of these big bays and things like that are just heavily polluted. Um, if you eat it every day, you're probably going to be fine, you'll get used to it, but if you're not eating it every day, um, you're just asking for trouble eating seafood. So if you, if you're a sensitive person, you should just stay away from seafood and fish, I would say, um, just chicken and beef.

Rick 47:41

Yeah, chicken and beef, you know, shrimp is, you tends to be a lot safer. Crab, especially, is is problematic and fish is somewhere in between.

Carol or Kristen 47:52

How about pork? Is pork big out there?

Rick 47:54

Yeah, pork is huge and, um, you know that's usually the safest thing pork, chicken, beef is a lot less popular, but you do see it every single day as well. But most things with chicken and pork and for the most part, if you eat that you're gonna be fine.

Carol or Kristen 48:08

Okay, so, um, I'd love to get us the rapid fire questions now. It's good, um, okay, so what is a common religion there, because we see all these statues everywhere? Is that the Buddhist or variety of?

Rick 48:20

religions 90%, probably around 90%, of people are Buddhist. If you go into the deep south of the country, most people are Muslim. Um, so there is a mix, but it tends to be very Geographic, geographically specific.

Carol or Kristen 48:36

So do they have it where some countries I think b, but there's a certain time of day that people pray? Does that happen in Thailand, or is it just kind of fascinating?

Rick 48:44

Muslims definitely do. Yeah, you can. You'll hear the um call to prayer Um several times a day from the local uh mosque.

Food, Music, and Money

Carol or Kristen 48:54

That's so interesting. Okay, and then what is one of your favorite meals there?

Rick 49:01

I mean, my favorite thing to eat has always been punning curry. That's usually my go-to, but I can't eat it absolutely every single day, so I moderate. And the other favorite thing I like is fried chicken. I eat T fried chicken. And then the other probably thing I eat almost every single day is S, as they call it, which is sausage, and there are a huge variety of different sausages. And I mean my girlfriend both loves sausage. And so here you know, in America sausage is like a it's not really a meal, right, you know, people don't really eat sausage as a meal, but in Thailand it's pretty much a meal you can just order. It usually comes with cabbage and ginger, pickled ginger.

Carol or Kristen 49:52

Oh, so interesting, because I think of like Germany sauerkraut, polish sauerkraut on sausage but then with curry, would you say curry, no ginger.

Rick 50:02

Cabbage raw cabbage and pickled ginger.

Carol or Kristen 50:06

That's typically how it's Ooh, I love all that, oh my gosh, absolutely delicious. And do they serve it? You typically with this white rice, common or brown rice or what's normal.

Rick 50:16

Yeah, so there's usually basically two types of rice. One would be like a fluffy rice, like you see in the States, and then the other is a sticky rice, which is like hard pressed, which is my favorite and a lot of people love that too, and, yeah, I usually eat that every day. Also, most everyone eats rice with every meal.

Carol or Kristen 50:36

Okay, and what do you have for breakfast normally?

Rick 50:39

I usually don't eat breakfast. Typically, the kids will eat breakfast. Every single day, though the kids eat jok, as they call it, which is like a rice soup. It's just kind of like boiled rice soup. It's actually really good. That's kind of oatmeal-ish kind of.

Carol or Kristen 50:59

Thing.

Rick 50:59

Yeah, it's kind of like it's a consistency of oatmeal, but it usually has like a flavor of like chicken broth and it's actually really good. You'd be surprised at how tasty it is. Usually people aren't eating that for breakfast. They're eating some sort of like really hearty kind of soup. Usually it has some like vegetables and some meat and that's a good breakfast, not yogurt and fruit and granola. I do. If I do eat breakfast at all, I do usually eat yogurt. Yeah, that's right.

Rick 51:32

So, second 11, that's one of the best things about Thailand, right. That really makes Thailand what it is. I mean, this is strange to say, but it's really true Is that there's a 7-eleven on every block in this country. Everywhere you go, there's a 7-eleven 7-eleven, and so 7-eleven is stocked with just about anything that you'd have at a 7-eleven in the United States, and so anything that you're ever wanting or craving, it's available right down the street, no matter where you are, and it's open 24 hours a day, and so the level of consumer convenience that creates oh, that's what you mentioned Higher than the United States, right? How far do you have to go for 7-eleven? You know in the States, so a lot of times it's 15 miles away. You know here not so much. You know pretty much anywhere you are, it's just right down the street, I mean they're like, that was like.

Rick 52:23

Bali. Bali was exactly the same Every quarter mile there's a 7-eleven and so it's so convenient. You know, and you have every Western, you know convenience item you would ever want. It's right there 24 hours a day.

Carol or Kristen 52:37

Okay, all right, and then how about music Is?

Rick 52:41

there some kind of?

Carol or Kristen 52:42

music that you've learned. That would be difficult for Thailand specifically.

Rick 52:46

There's a lot of different styles of music and there are a lot of different styles that are particular to Thailand. Pretty much people in Thailand don't listen to too much Western music, Although you do hear a ton of Western music and a lot of people only listen to Western music. A lot of times you'll get into a taxi or something and they'll just be playing totally Western music. It's completely normal to be listening to Western music as well, but every style of American music is also there's a comparable Thai style as well. So if there's, like you know, 50s bebop or whatever, there's a Thai version that country music, Thai version of country music, any sort of genre in America there's a Thai style that as well.

Carol or Kristen 53:34

Oh, okay, and I think you sent me some karaoke pictures. Like people have you been to? Is there live music then? In a lot of places there's a lot of live music.

Rick 53:42

A ton of live music of every different style too. Probably the most popular I would say with the exception of kind of the country styles which are, you know, pretty much country style people listening to that in country, rural areas would be dance music. Dance music is probably the most popular here, especially going to like live music and stuff like that. It's usually dance music or some version of rock.

Carol or Kristen 54:09

Ooh, I think I just fell in love with Thailand.

Rick 54:12

Oh, the music is great. Yeah, I think it's the way you like here in terms of music, for sure.

Carol or Kristen 54:17

Okay, and what's? Some money called the Baht? The Baht. How do you spell that? B-a-t?

Rick 54:23

B-A-H-T.

Carol or Kristen 54:26

B-A-H-T and is it easy to do. You really want to use your credit card mostly, or do you want to use cash machines or you exchange it from people on the street? What's the best way to change money?

Rick 54:36

Yeah. So what you want to do really is get a debit card. There's really only one really good way to do this and you want to do what you want to do is get a Charles Schwab debit card. This is true around the world. You're going to get a Charles Schwab debit card. Load that from whatever accounts that you want to load it from. The reason for that is because Charles Schwab doesn't charge you ATM fees, and so when you want to do a withdrawal from your debit, you don't have to pay an ATM fee, which is going to really add up. It's usually about 3% to 5%, and you're not going to be able to avoid that any other way with very few, except. There are a couple of really odd ways to do it, which I've tried and are possible, but there's so many limits that it doesn't even make sense. So what you want to do before you do an international long travel absolutely there's no question about it Get a Charles Schwab debit card.

Carol or Kristen 55:33

Okay.

Rick 55:34

You can also do this with a Fidelity account right when you can have like a second.

Carol or Kristen 55:38

I don't have Charles Schwab, so that's good. So I can get a Fidelity debit card and that works the same. I got killed in Bali.

Rick 55:47

It works almost the same, I think, with Fidelity, though you're limited to certain networks. You can't do any.

Carol or Kristen 55:54

And so I need to get a Charles Schwab.

Rick 55:55

Yeah, you really should, because Charles Schwab will reimburse you for any fees that come up, whereas I think Fidelity, as long as you're on the major network which I think is serious, or something like that then it's all free.

Rick 56:05

but there are some limitations and so, yeah, then what you do is you just go to ATM, pull out cash, pull out as much as you can at one time it's usually the way I do it, which is usually about $1,000 or so that I keep in cash and then, for hotels, better off just paying those with credit cards, because then you have some ability to dispute things. Especially, you know, if you have a good relationship with your credit card company and you have a good credit card, you know they'll usually let you dispute anything. You can just say, oh, that wasn't fair, that I didn't like that Charge back, and you know the credit card company will call them up and say you know, this person's looking to do a charge back, would you like to have a charge back or would you like to refund them their money? And they'll usually refund you your money and if they don't, you do a charge back and either way you're protected. So you know there's really it's kind of dumb to be spending cash on hotels.

Rick 57:02

Things do come up and you might have a dispute. And again, with hotels, you know a lot of people make the mistake of booking everything in advance and then you wind up stuck at someplace If you don't like it. They usually are not gonna refund your money. So if you go there, you've paid two weeks in advance and then you stay the first night and you're like this place sucks. I don't know why I ever chose this place. I want my money back. They're like well, sorry, we're not doing that.

Rick 57:29

So you're stuck you know you can deal with your credit card, but, neil, most of the time you've actually agreed to pay the whole thing anyway, you know. So there's not a whole lot you can do in terms of a charge back for something like that.

Carol or Kristen 57:42

Okay, and then our last question is the closest place to surf, is that? Phuket is popular.

Rick 57:48

Yeah, Phuket has a number of surfing beaches and I think probably all of the good surfing beaches in Thailand are probably right there in that province or very near there.

Carol or Kristen 58:00

On the western side.

Rick 58:02

Yeah.

Carol or Kristen 58:03

Great, okay, well, I'm gonna have to wrap it up, but thank you so much, rick. This has been super fun and I think we could probably go deeper another day, and also there's so much more to learn.

Rick 58:15

Absolutely yeah.

Carol or Kristen 58:16

Yeah, I know we took a lot of time with the Visa.

Rick 58:18

Yeah, definitely those are the things that take a lot of time to really get up to speed on.

Carol or Kristen 58:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Fantastic.

Rick 58:27

Thank you so much. Have a great evening, my pleasure. Okay for us. Okay, see you soon. Thanks, bye, okay bye.

Carol or Kristen 58:35

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, can you please take a second and do a quick follow of the show and rate us in your podcast app, and if you have a minute, we would really appreciate a review. Following and rating is the best way to support us. If you're on Instagram, let's connect. We're at when Next Podcast. Thanks again, k W R.