# Hello Mexico City, maybe



## KelyRipon (Oct 23, 2016)

If your job wanted to transfer you to Mexico City for up to 18 months, and you had kids, where in the city would you choose to live for best schools (for 5 and 9 year old) and safety?


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## Gatos (Aug 16, 2016)

KelyRipon said:


> If your job wanted to transfer you to Mexico City for up to 18 months, and you had kids, where in the city would you choose to live for best schools (for 5 and 9 year old) and safety?


Where will your office be ?

If I were given a hefty expense budget I would opt for Polanco. That is where they are moving the US Embassy... The other area I like personally is Jardines del Pedregal - but that may be pricey as well.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Gatos said:


> Where will your office be ?
> 
> If I were given a hefty expense budget I would opt for Polanco. That is where they are moving the US Embassy... The other area I like personally is Jardines del Pedregal - but that may be pricey as well.


It will be several years before the US Embassy moves to pricey Polanco. Right now it's in my neighborhood, colonia Cuauhtémoc. Jardines del Pedregal is super-pricey and exclusive. Neither is a place I'd want to live.


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## Gatos (Aug 16, 2016)

Isla Verde said:


> It will be several years before the US Embassy moves to pricey Polanco. Right now it's in my neighborhood, colonia Cuauhtémoc. Jardines del Pedregal is super-pricey and exclusive. Neither is a place I'd want to live.


The US is moving its Embassy because its current location is deemed unsafe - no ? (edit : and old and probably stuffed full of bugs planted by un-friendlies over the years).

And as for 'super-pricey and exclusive' - I think that is a relative/personal thing - and if a large multi-national company was picking up the cost for an employee - might make for an enjoyable experience. Guess we are all different people... 

But I agree with you - neither of my two preferences are for someone living on a shoe-string - nor for someone whose office might be in Sante Fe.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Gatos said:


> The US is moving its Embassy because its current location is deemed unsafe - no ? (edit : and old and probably stuffed full of bugs planted by un-friendlies over the years).
> 
> And as for 'super-pricey and exclusive' - I think that is a relative/personal thing - and if a large multi-national company was picking up the cost for an employee - might make for an enjoyable experience. Guess we are all different people...
> 
> But I agree with you - neither of my two preferences are for someone living on a shoe-string - nor for someone whose office might be in Sante Fe.


One reason the Embassy may be moving is to get it away from the myriad demonstrations and protests that take place on Reforma, which often end up in front of the Embassy even if the reason for the protests has nothing to do with the evil USA.

I like living in a middle-class neighborhood, where people are friendly. Wealthy Mexicans are not my cup of tea, but that's just me.

Even someone not living on a shoe-string budget would find it hard to afford rents in areas like Polanco, et al.


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## Gatos (Aug 16, 2016)

Isla Verde said:


> One reason the Embassy may be moving is to get it away from the myriad demonstrations and protests that take place on Reforma, which often end up in front of the Embassy even if the reason for the protests has nothing to do with the evil USA.
> 
> I like living in a middle-class neighborhood, where people are friendly. Wealthy Mexicans are not my cup of tea, but that's just me.
> 
> Even someone not living on a shoe-string budget would find it hard to afford rents in areas like Polanco, et al.


I thought I read somewhere that the US is paying its Mexico City Embassy employees hazardous duty pay.

Some of our best friends are wealthy Mexicans. Some of the people we dislike the most are also wealthy Mexicans (different sets). Some of our best friends are middle class Americans. Some of the people we dislike the most are also middle class Americans.

Personally I love life around Reforma (Zona Rosa, Condessa ..) - but maybe not to live at full-time.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Gatos said:


> I thought I read somewhere that the US is paying its Mexico City Embassy employees hazardous duty pay.
> 
> Some of our best friends are wealthy Mexicans. Some of the people we dislike the most are also wealthy Mexicans (different sets). Some of our best friends are middle class Americans. Some of the people we dislike the most are also middle class Americans.
> 
> Personally I love life around Reforma (Zona Rosa, Condessa ..) - but maybe not to live at full-time.


Yes, I've heard that too. What a ridiculous idea that living in Mexico City is somehow a hazardous undertaking!

I have nothing in common with the Mexican elite and have no contact with people from that sector of Mexican society. 

I live near Reforma, near the Zona Rosa and not too far from Roma and Condesa. I remember the Zona Rosa from the 1970s and 1980s, when it was a much more civilized place to hang out, though even back then it was not primarily a residential area. Roma is nice, though too expensive for my budget - Condesa is a bit too trendy for my tastes. I feel lucky to be living in my modest middle-class barrio, though even here the rents have been rising in recent years.


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## Gatos (Aug 16, 2016)

Isla Verde said:


> Yes, I've heard that too. What a ridiculous idea that living in Mexico City is somehow a hazardous undertaking!
> 
> I have nothing in common with the Mexican elite and have no contact with people from that sector of Mexican society.
> 
> I live near Reforma, near the Zona Rosa and not too far from Roma and Condesa. I remember the Zona Rosa from the 1970s and 1980s, when it was a much more civilized place to hang out, though even back then it was not primarily a residential area. Roma is nice, though too expensive for my budget - Condesa is a bit too trendy for my tastes. I feel lucky to be living in my modest middle-class barrio, though even here the rents have been rising in recent years.


*Everything* in Mexico seems to be getting more expensive. We have this project we have been putting off for about a year now. We received a quote then and asked the guy to re-quote now. Up over 20%. He says because materials are up 35%. But I don't understand why my UDIBONOS aren't increasing in value...

This coming week you have marches down Reforma for day of the dead. As well as a Formula One race. We were thinking of travelling in there. The hotel we stay at perhaps a half dozen times a year (in Zona Rosa) normally charges let's say $120USD. Next weekend they want upwards of $400USD...

For perspective - with a college degree I once lived in a trailer in the middle of an orange grove outside Orlando earning $100USD/week (free rent). Life is an adventure.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Gatos said:


> This coming week you have marches down Reforma for day of the dead. As well as a Formula One race. We were thinking of travelling in there. The hotel we stay at perhaps a half dozen times a year (in Zona Rosa) normally charges let's say $120USD. Next weekend they want upwards of $400USD...


I can recommend a nice, old-fashioned, family-run hotel in my neighborhood that charges a lot less than the place you've been staying at in the Zona Rosa. It's not fancy, but it is very friendly. Its several buildings are surrounded by a large walled Mexican-style garden.


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## Gatos (Aug 16, 2016)

Isla Verde said:


> I can recommend a nice, old-fashioned, family-run hotel in my neighborhood that charges a lot less than the place you've been staying at in the Zona Rosa. It's not fancy, but it is very friendly. Its several buildings are surrounded by a large walled Mexican-style garden.


I'd appreciate that. We are always open to new experiences. We may not act on it - but my wife gave me a sour-puss face when I told her no way. If you don't mind you can either PM me the name - or post it here and give them a plug (I won't tell a moderator).

Thanks


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Gatos said:


> I'd appreciate that. We are always open to new experiences. We may not act on it - but my wife gave me a sour-puss face when I told her no way. If you don't mind you can either PM me the name - or post it here and give them a plug (I won't tell a moderator).
> 
> Thanks


"no way" what?

Here are a couple of links: 

https://www.hotelcasagonzalez.com/

Hotel Casa Gonzalez in Mexico City, Mexico - Lonely Planet


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos (Apr 17, 2014)

Isla Verde said:


> One reason the Embassy may be moving is to get it away from the myriad demonstrations and protests that take place on Reforma, which often end up in front of the Embassy even if the reason for the protests has nothing to do with the evil USA.
> 
> I like living in a middle-class neighborhood, where people are friendly. Wealthy Mexicans are not my cup of tea, but that's just me.
> 
> Even someone not living on a shoe-string budget would find it hard to afford rents in areas like Polanco, et al.


Protestors can find the Embassy anywhere. I'd opt for the previous reason. Two cars that were located a lot further away from the the Reforma outside road knocked down two U.S. Embassies in Africa in 1998 and killed a few hundred people.

I'm sure they've hardened the old building as best they could but it's just too easy a target. I'd hate to be an employee that had to work in there every day.

I know a few Mexican friends who do as I do when walking along Reforma, hurry up their step as they pass by the embassy.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Protestors can find the Embassy anywhere. I'd opt for the previous reason. Two cars that were located a lot further away from the the Reforma outside road knocked down two U.S. Embassies in Africa in 1998 and killed a few hundred people.
> 
> I'm sure they've hardened the old building as best they could but it's just too easy a target. I'd hate to be an employee that had to work in there every day.
> 
> I know a few Mexican friends who do as I do when walking along Reforma, hurry up their step as they pass by the embassy.


Oh, please, give me a break! You and a few Mexican friends are afraid the US Embassy may be blown up any day now.  I guess it was brave of me to spend a half hour inside it a couple of weeks ago when I went there to get help with my Social Security account. 

What's the security situation like in Thailand these days?


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## Gatos (Aug 16, 2016)

Isla Verde said:


> "no way" what?
> 
> Here are a couple of links:
> 
> ...


Thanks for the suggestion. Looks like a nice place. Unfortunately they are booked full through Nov 2nd :-( Perhaps another time. You are going to have a very crowded city for the next week or so.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Gatos said:


> Thanks for the suggestion. Looks like a nice place. Unfortunately they are booked full through Nov 2nd :-( Perhaps another time. You are going to have a very crowded city for the next week or so.


Yes, it's a very popular hotel.

If you decide to stay there on another visit to the CDMX, let me know. We can get together and have coffee in the lovely garden of the Casa González.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos (Apr 17, 2014)

Isla Verde said:


> Oh, please, give me a break! You and a few Mexican friends are afraid the US Embassy may be blown up any day now.  I guess it was brave of me to spend a half hour inside it a couple of weeks ago when I went there to get help with my Social Security account.
> 
> What's the security situation like in Thailand these days?


I was working in an office three miles from the Pentagon on 9/11. When the U.S. fighter planes finally arrived over Virginia at supersonic speed, breaking the sound barrier, alas after Pentagon already hit, it sounded as bombs were going off all around us. Many offices emptied in panic. My daughter lived in a 20 story building on the other side of 395 across from the Pentagon, and her boyfriend found pieces of the jet up on the roof and called the FBI, who quickly came over and scoured building. The plane clipped the top of the building as it dropped in its final approach.

The big lesson: U.S. security officials had little imagination to understand how imaginative enemies can be. After the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, the U.S. ordered a global review of how vulnerable all of its embassies were around the world. I lived in DC region and we worked for a company that consulted with State Dept. The embassy is Mexico was declared one of the most vulnerable in the world to a car bomb.

Mexico though is a paradise compared to Thailand, thanks for asking. The Thais have about 5% Muslim population all concentrated in south on border with Muslim Malaysia. Low grade insurgency, just against Thai police, army, until this year when Muslims did set off bombs in Western resorts in south for first time ever but low grade bombs designed to scare not mass murder. It did wound dozens of foreigners and kill one. 

Absolute nightmare for Thailand as tourism is 20 percent of economy. Of course, it's a military dictatorship, basing much of their authority on the king who had been on throne since 1946 and he died two weeks ago. Thai military closely monitors the web, blocks access to many sites (hence another need for the VPN I have that you learned what it was a few days ago). Anyway, foreigners here wouldn't dare to talk about Thai govt in public or identifying themselves on the web as expats in Mexico can carp about Mexican drug running and corruption.

To make it even more fun, when Russians first started bombing ISIS in Syria last year, ISIS made a public threat to retaliate against the large Russian expat population in the city where I live in Thailand. Nothing ever happened, Of course, the ironic thing is that the same place is a very popular resort for Gulf Arabs wanting a vacation from their harsh Sharia ruled countries, so if ISIS was determined, they could infiltrate people pretty easily into the country. And to make it fun, I live in a condo complex that is glorious but packed with Russians, 80 percent of the people who live here. 

I live on the first floor, and spend much of my time in my balcony, writing, right over the pool, palm trees swaying overhead. If ISIS ever attacks here, they'd hit the entertainment night spots for maximum effect and casualties, but yeah, as I gaze across the pool area that makes up the entire interior between the four building, I wonder what I'd do if I suddenly saw a group of black clad gunmen come strolling in.

As a former journalist who used to work in many military governments, it doesn't bother me. I'm not an activist.

Thais are noted the world over for their placid natures, the country's self promoted nick name, the Land of Smiles, but oh, if you get a Thai angry, especially any perceived insult to the king or Buddhism, man or woman can explode to violence. No such thing known in Mexico.

But again, Thais, like Mexicans, generally like Americans, They warm noticeably when I tell them I'm American and not Russian or European.

The Russians who live here, however, are mostly hostile to Americans, until we get to chatting and a few ask me how they could get a visa.

But anyway, even when I lived there in the 80s, Embassy personnel told me they were warned to give advance warning whenever they drove out of Mexico City, never to stop if they get into an accident. Their heads were even then filled with such dangers given to them by top Embassy personnel, it was as if we were living in a separate country as I always loved leaving DC o weekends for car trips. so maybe the danger pay dates back to those days and has nothing to do with bomb danger. I've never worked for any U.S. agency (well, except when I got drafted), and their mindset often seems as strange to me as the Russians openly sneering at people they think are Americans here because of how Obama has clashed with Putin, and since I studied Russia on the graduate level, also because Russians have always had a love-hate relationship with the more advanced West, going through periods of pleading for their advanced knowledge then accusing foreigners of wanting to destroy Russian culture.

Tears pleaded for Germans to immigrate and bring their technology especially farming techniques, but tsars then never trusted Russians with German surnames even though they lived there 200 years, and Stalin of course asked Russians to go to west and risk their lives, in Spanish civil war, spying against Hitler and then liquidated nearly every one once they returned home as "foreign spies."

Strange world we live in. But when I return to Mexico, I'd go into the Embassy on business, but still step smartly walking by it. And again, every employee inside knows what would happen if someone drove a car bomb along that Reforma access road and set it off. I'm sure the Embassy doctors freely dispense anti-anxieity pills.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

M-MM, So how did you end up in Thailand? Are you thinking of returning to Mexico some day?


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos (Apr 17, 2014)

Isla Verde said:


> M-MM, So how did you end up in Thailand? Are you thinking of returning to Mexico some day?


While I've made my money all my life writing, I've always wanted to write the Horrible American Novel. It was wonderful to return to Mexico but I could never get the writing going as in the old days. I had worked in Thailand for a few months back in 2003 and had such a spectacular time, I figured I would try it. And it worked, but only after a a while. I'm writing 6-10 hours a day, no time for the country's night life.

While Thai food is great, this resort region has drawn hundreds of professional cooks from Europe who decided to live in a tropical paradise. Consequently there are hundreds of restaurants with authentic European food (and of course from Japan, China and India).

Swiss, Austria, Dutch, Swedish restaurants and of course many British pubs. The only English restaurant in Mexico City is I think the most expensive restaurant in D.C.. Also, in both the U.S. and Mexico, restaurants that serve authentic foreign food feel free to charge huge mark ups. Here, it's all normally priced.

I've never gone to Ireland so that while I've read about Irish lamb stew all my life, never tasted it until I wandered into an Iris pub here and saw it on the menu. It's delicious.

Sometime in 2017 I want to return to Mexico, though I'll have a tough decision. I have all my friends and semi family in Mexico city (married a Mexican) but after living in a resort town next to the beach with a great pool and a fantastic gym on premises (searching where to live in Mexico City, walking distance to a great gym was always number one priority), I'm wondering whether I should do the same. There would never be the international flavor that's prevalent here. I imagine the main foreign influence would be American.

As you, I enjoyed the non humid climate of Mexico City, never really liked year round tropical, but there were only three brutal months here, and the living is so easy if everything is right there, and it's warm 12 months a year. But I couldn't take a place overrun with Americans. The beaches directly south of Oaxaca, where I spent two months in 2015, I now must say, do have heavy European influences, including Euro restaurants. More Europeans than Americans, their usual disdain for Americans that I just shrug off (they think the beaches are theirs as they "discovered them" and fear every American interloper is a sign that massive hotels and our beloved McDonalds will soon follow), but alas, lousy wireless and few gyms.

Oh, Mexican food alas is one things Thais can't do.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Oh, Mexican food alas is one things Thais can't do.


That's very interesting given that the chiles that Thai food uses copiously come from Mexico!


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## Anonimo (Apr 8, 2012)

Isla Verde said:


> That's very interesting given that the chiles that Thai food uses copiously come from Mexico!


Off-topic, it's true, but please permit me: Thai woman chef meets Mexican man and opens excellent Thai restaurant in CDMX: Galanga.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Anonimo said:


> Off-topic, it's true, but please permit me: Thai woman chef meets Mexican man and opens excellent Thai restaurant in CDMX: Galanga.


It sounds like a nice place but the prices are a bit beyond the boundaries of my eating-out budget.


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