thailand gogogo!!??

The SN makes sense with a fire breathing dragon avatar, I need to load it.

But seriously, one of the best parts of traveling abroad is being able to date foreign women, you have no idea how terrible American women are until you date outside of the country and get some perspective.

I've been happily married to a Russian woman for 2 years, honestly no contest.

Really? More about this please...

WTF? Norway and sweden are some of the most expensive countries in Europe. What Bilbo says regarding this is completely spot on.

Great posts bilbo. I've just come back from travelling mainland europe for a little bit and this has given me travel lust again! 3 great posts so far though....

you are the greatest , bilbo.

For the living outside the country thing, does bouncing around various places around the world count or do you have to establish a permanent residence in another country through some formal process? Do you have to pay foreign taxes to avoid US taxes?

love these posts

Great post.


About soda/beer thing.

3-4$ for 0.5l of beer and a bit more then 2$ for 0.25l soda in Slovenia. Some eastern countries are even cheaper.

Check out this:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f2555ez.pdf

You have to live there for 1 year+ or be there enough days within the last year to qualify.

You guys post too fast.

Bouncing around doesn't count, unfortunately. You can take a "foreign income exclusion" of up to about 85k based on either:

1) being a bonafide resident of another country (resident, not citizen) for 1 year +

or

2) having a physical presence in the country for enough days within the last year (check out the form I linked above for the threshold.

The idea behind this is the presumption that if you live as a resident in another country, you will pay taxes in that country, whereas if you are just there on business/working while travelling through/etc. you are not paying taxes in that country and therefore should pay them in the US.

I actually advocate living somewhere for a year, though, so you should be able to save a lot of money by living somewhere where gambling winnings aren't taxed, unless you are very balla, in which case the tax-free 85k does not represent a big chunk of your income anyway :P. In that case, pick a country with a similar tax rate to the US (hard to do, though, lol).

im down

Coke? Or a local brand? Everywhere I went in eastern countries, coke/pepsi was way more than locally-brewed beer.

In Germany I believe they actually recently passed a law that bottled water MUST be cheaper than beer, because all the breweries that owned pubs had beer cheaper than non-alcoholic drinks (on which they get little to no margin) vs. the beer that the pub sells (which must be bought from the brewer by the publican), and families were getting pissed about it and made a stink. Or perhaps the law said that the pub had to sell at least one non-alcoholic drink cheaper than beer. Or maybe they were just arguing about enacting such a law. Was something like that.

The whole breweries-owning-pubs thing is why, ironically, if you go to Germany, you often won't find a lot of variety of beer at any one pub (usually one Pils, one Helles [lager], one HefeWeizen, one Dunkles/Alt, and maybe a Doppelbock or something). And there are very few pubs of the "100 different beers" variety.

In Regensburg, it's even geographic. Half the city is owned by the Thurn und Taxis brewery (which by the way is owned by Paulaner, and Thurn und Taxis is the princely family descended from the guys who invented the modern Postal Service system -- awesome the random **** you learn), while the other half is owned by Bishofshof, which, I believe, belongs to the catholic church. At university parties it was even so crass that there was a dividing line between north and south campus; if you were on the north side, you had to sell T&T beer, and on the south side, you had to sell Bischofshof, if you were having a party/event/etc.

In my travels the breweries-owning-land (and therefore pubs) was not as big a deal outside of Germany, but you still ran into it often enough throughout central Europe.

old person,

wtf was that whole paragraph about beer without mentioning belgium?


nice post even though i already knew all of this. i guess this means i should move to the US >.<

young whippersnapper,

You should learn to show some respect to your elders. The proper form of address is "old dude".

Only went to Belgium once, to Brussels. It was a convention and I didn't get out much. But here in Seattle there's a Belgian pub called Brauwer's. And I've been a few times.

Belgian beer is weird. It's syrupy and thick and has a lot of similarity with port wine, of all things. Not my cup o' tea, although many like it.

I have done this. Last May I started talking with 2 lurkers to move to thailand, and I went in Octobre. I spent 8 months in Asia.

For 6 months I rented a house in Phuket in southern Thailand, while going on weekends to Hong Kong, Macau, and the Philipines. I then went to Australia for 2 months.

I look at poker as my "golden goose", and I definatly feel that for me it won't be around for ever. Poker is fantastic and there is not a single other job in the world that I can pick up and move to thailand, while only working 1-2 hours a day.

When we settled in Thailand there was 1 other grinder there, but 4 other houses have set up since, and when we go back in Octobre there are going to be at least 15 2p2'ers around.

I have also told myself i'm never living with non-grinders again. Before I went to thailand I lived with my parents. Regular ppl just don't understand what a downswing can do for you, or the general mindset of a grinder. Living with other grinders is sick, you have feedback on all your hands, you are around ppl who understand how sick a downswing is, and are always ready to celebrate that sick heater your gonna go on.

I'm gonna move around for as long as I can, after 6 months in Thailand i'm in Vegas for another few weeks, then 3 months in Argentina, then 5 months in Thailand, then 4 months in Hong Kong.....

There is no other job that you cna move around as much as with online poker, and it really is a fantastic opportunity. Plus there are 2p2'ers EVERWHERE, if you were to move to any place you could think of, I bet you could find a 2p2'er there who would show you around.

What are your poker credentials OP?
Just out of curiosity? I gather the fact that you cite your income from amazon as a point that you dont make a significant income from poker?

Define "significant".

I'm a 7ptbb/100 winner at NL200 over a whopping huge 50k hands in the last 18 months (since I started grad school).

I'm a 10 ptbb/100 winner at PLO/PLO8 100 over a larger-but-still-insignificant sample size.

Of course, this is not "significant" income because it's just not a lot of hands. FT job + grad school will do that to ya.

But I just graduated, so look the **** out

before grad school, in the pre-uiega glory days, I was about a 7ptbb/100 winner at party at a bunch of levels and a large sample size, and a 1.2 ptbb/100 LHE winner over a decent sample before I started NLHE, back when most everybody played LHE and before so many pros figured out that NLHE was such a golden goose.

100% down for this at the end of the year

even better if its in Thailand, was planning on heading there anyway

Nice series of posts Bilbo.

in obv. this one has to be for a month or something though.

edit: good posts bilbo i read all of them

edit2: ladyboys ftw

I think we should get a lot of us together and head to South Africa in 2010 for the world cup. That would be a solid couple months.

south africa is ****ed at the moment man

These posts are awesome, keep making them please.

SSNL EUROPE SUMMER HOUSE YO

Bilbo,

yes.