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Interestingly I had the same reaction here in a local neighborhood in NYC that was largely hispanic when I was looking for a place. It was only years later I found out that bars on windows are pretty commonplace all over Latin America regardless of any safety issues. Watch for that the next time you see pictures of houses in nice neighborhoods in Central, & perhaps parts of South America, it's just the way they do it. Probably did have a origin for safety I guess.
Like the realtors say " Oh those, they are just there to prevent the kids from breaking the window with a soccer ball"!
You would be doing us all a favor if you told us some more about your adaptive mechanisms, or better yet, how you happened to learn them!
Thanks in advance, Jane
There is one very over-arching mechanism. Just always remember this: It's THEIR country, THEIR customs, THEIR religion. YOUR normal isn't THEIR normal. They don't need to make their country a mini-America if they don't want to.
If you just keep a very open attitude in this regard and try to understand their way of doing things, sometimes you even start to like them, vis-Ã -vis American ones. Even if it continues to be a struggle, at least you can let yourself be just mildly annoyed, not in desperation and despair.
It's funny, but I think sometimes the toughest places are the ones closest to the US in language, religion, and customs, - like England, for instance. They seem like such "American-oids" so why do they keep their homes at 62 D Fahrenheit? Why do they eat disgusting food? Why do they charge so much for petrel (from way higher taxes) that I can't drive a bloated land yacht, even when they have North Sea Oil and are self-sufficient? You just have to tell yourself -- it's THEIR country, they can do what they want and don't have to ask the USA's permission!
Another thing is to try imitation, it can be a lot of fun too as well as make a place friendlier to you. E.g. my wife and I spent over 4 years in the Middle East. One really irksome thing is that ethnic discrimination is rampant and officially overlooked (if not encouraged!). If we were in a long line at a grocery store checkout, the local Arab citizens were perfectly in their rights, and many exercised them, to cut in front of all the Indian, Philippino, and Western guest workers. Also, very different treatment in customer service offices and government ministries. We started wearing the long shirts the locals wear - Abayas for women and Dishdashas for men and my wife would cover her hair - and our treatment became much better. Of course we would never take the cuts or other perogatives of real citizens on principle. It was really fun and surprisingly easy to fool even local citizens that we were natives (I'm an olive-skinned white man with a large hooked nose and my wife is a light skinned black so it wasn't hard)- until we opened our mouths! Another good thing is to try to learn at least some of the language - such as basic greetings, congratulation expressions, and restaurant basics. This really makes you more loved and respected, even among folks with fluent English.
It sounds more like a nightmare than a terrific place.
Certainly understandable. I gave you the tabloid version of life on the Upper West Side in the Sixties, but just as the life of the great bulk of people in a city is never touched by the stuff of tabloid headlines, so in my neighborhood most of us did not encounter expertly butchered cop corpses, heroin dealers, prostitutes, gang members often, if at all.
Vis-a-vis the cop. Someone knocked on the door, flashed a badge and ID, gave me a rundown of what happened in building down the street and why the guy might have been in the neighborhood off-duty, and did I know or see anything that might be helpful. No, I didn't. Thanks. And I went out and did my usual, and didn't conjure up paranoid fantasies because that wretched man made a very bad mistake. I am strongly inclined to believe from living there that you get a far better sense of proportion about life at street level than you do sitting in the suburbs reading the newspaper and getting upset imagining ones self as in the center of it all.
People there lived rather ordinary lives, but ordinary lives at a real pinched financial level and in unpretty surroundings. And it is not painful to learn to buy food in the downstairs market where no one speaks English, or eat different and cheaper meals with local people, or shop for your shirt from racks on the street and listen to music that is different than what you have known, or go to ethnic fairs and events.
I lived there for decades, long enough have a group of Latino and white, and some black, neighborhood friends, and to enjoy a whole big slice of American life there that most Americans don't get to have...or don't even care to think of as American. For a rather insecure, white, small town boy it was a whole new world. Yes, I can understand a negative reaction to the environment and social ambiance; but personally- as a lived experience - it became a huge influence on the heart of my life, without which I feel I would have taken a more pedestrian and less satisfying path.
I have a friend who is saving up to retire to Nicaragua...her dream is to open a little beach bar there. Any thoughts on stable, beautiful, cheap countries that would be good to retire to? ..
I've read that Ecuador and Uruguay in S. America are nice, though I've never been.
Malaysia or Thailand, if you can handle the heat, would be good bets.
True...
Thing is that NYC in the 70s/early 80s was the pits, I split in '75 & didn't return for 20 years. I remember Son of Sam wandering around, high murder/mugging rates, guys walking onto the subway car with huge boomboxes screeching out obnoxious music, & grafitti & bad drugs seemingly everywhere that ultimately led to the crack epidemic that crippled much of that generation. I left more because I had the wanderlust anyway, but that atmosphere made it easier.
Now it is a great safe place to live for a retired person in so many ways except financially. I have a pretty good housing deal & I have to decide if it is worth giving up all the amenities, culture, healthcare & myriad options in order to save $1K+/month & have a quiet trail to hike. Tough call because it really is a great place in so many ways.
Chiang Mai can be cooler at times & has a reasonable expat community & I haven't been to Penang... but I think I'm over that region now except for vacations.
Yep Chiang Mai does have the more diverse expat community, with people of all ages some working and some retired. There are some areas like Kanchanaburi that have expat community that seem to consist mainly of worn out looking white dudes who hang out at the bars from 10:00 am until night. I honestly don't know how their wallets (or liver) can handle it.
If you want Thailand and don't need lots of other Westerners around then the bigger cities out east in Isaan aren't a bad choice. Nakhon Ratchasima is an easy train ride from Bangkok is large enough to have a modern mall with movies from USA and all the usual chain restaurants McDonalds, Swensons, Sizzler, Dunkin Donuts, Pizza Hut, etc. Most of the expats there are older guys with Thai wives but at least they seem to be actually living lives (many have kids) instead of existing only to hang out at bars.
I'm assuming others like Udon Thani are similar, haven't been there yet but planning on checking it out after we leave Myanmar in April.
Interestingly I had the same reaction here in a local neighborhood in NYC that was largely hispanic when I was looking for a place. It was only years later I found out that bars on windows are pretty commonplace all over Latin America regardless of any safety issues. Watch for that the next time you see pictures of houses in nice neighborhoods in Central, & perhaps parts of South America, it's just the way they do it. Probably did have a origin for safety I guess.
I can speak to Uruguay and northeast Argentina. In the larger cities, they do indeed have bars on their windows. And, yes, it is a theft deterrent. My ex- is Uruguayan and her parents live in the countryside. A very, very small village about 35km north of Montevideo. Only maybe 15-20 residential structures. The pueblo is so isolated that nobody has bars on their windows there. A lot of her family live in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, a few in distant villages/cities; and they also have bars.
p.s. Uruguay is high on my list as a part-time retirement location. Cost-of-living is pretty reasonable. What's stopping me so far is the weather. Summers and winters are brutal. Spring and Autumn are pretty spectacular. It's a mixed bag.
In the United States you might have a neighbor that irritates you with a barking dog, but in Thailand or Panama it might be a neighbor who decides they are going to string up lights and open a Karaoke Bar in their backyard that runs until 2:00 am every night and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it because their brother in law is the local assistant government minister of whatever. Totally different level of irritation.
Just to piggyback on that....most Latin American countries simply do not have the same concept of privacy and being quiet as Americans do. Having neighbors who have loud parties is just considered normal in many Latin American countries.
There is one very over-arching mechanism. Just always remember this: It's THEIR country, THEIR customs, THEIR religion. YOUR normal isn't THEIR normal. They don't need to make their country a mini-America if they don't want to.
Now if we could just get our immigrants to understand that concept...
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