ceejay

At least he had a reception to hang out in. I once went out of a small hotel in Nan for a walk round the area and when I got back the receptionist had gone home and locked the front door! I had to wait outside for a couple of hours until the night security guard turned up.

This article is based on a report of Brazil;s own Senate http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/direitos-humanos/noticia/2017-12/forum-reports-black-genocide-brazil-un On the general safety of Brazil, I too confess to never having been there. My opinion of safety there (or otherwise) is based on the experience of a former colleague of mine. He was English, his wife Brazilian. He gave up a lifestyle in Brazil that included a large house and servants, for a poky semi in Hertfordshire because he and his wife decided that Brazil was too dangerous a place to bring up children.

At 6.30 "In general it's a lot of fear mongering turning people off" Quite.

Every 5 years for me, but I am in a slightly higher risk group than average. Had the most recent done last month, as it happens. It found one non-malignant polyp. It was done at the Sriphat Medical Centre in Chiang Mai. The doctor who did it is a teacher at CMU Medical School, trained in the US and has recently spent 4 months in Japan learning advanced endoscopy techniques. Total cost for initial consultation, special laxatives for preparation, the actual colonoscopy, biopsy on the polyp and follow up consultation with the doctor around 17,000 baht.

That's nothing. In the Grand Place (main square) in Brussels they have a museum of beer - and almost next door a museum of chocolate. Who needs sex?

Many expats use Transferwise. They do charge (quite low) fees, but these are offset by better than average exchange rates. https://transferwise.com/gb/send-money/send-money-to-thailand

For the weekends, maybe the market at Koh Kret. I have been there and it's fun - and a chance to ride the river boats: https://migrationology.com/koh-kret-day-trip-bangkok/ For an evening, maybe the Muay Thai at Rajadamnern or Lumpinee Stadum: https://rajadamnern.com/ https://www.lumpineemuaythai.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMImN-dsKfe4wIVRXZgCh0NdwRAEAAYAiAAEgJWDPD_BwE Believe me, seeing Muay Thai at a real, professional, stadium is nothing, nothing at all, like seeing it at one of the tourist oriented rings. Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre and the Jim Thompson House are very close together https://en.bacc.or.th/ http://www.jimthompsonhouse.com/ These last two may be of more interest to you than to your friend. Which brings me to a suggestion: offer him a day off to go off on his own and leave you to do the same. A whole week in Bangkok, and feeling obliged to keep you entertained may be quite stressful for him. Give him the chance of a break. On a similar note, do not assume that staying in a nice hotel and eating in good restaurants will be a treat for him. He may actually find that stressful as well, if he feels out of place there. Watch out for signs of that, and be kind. Let him choose where to eat sometimes and don't be surprised if it is a food court or street stall.

And "cucumber" is, indeed, what it was. He must have heard the word from another Thai and spelt it phonetically, as he had heard it.

And another thing: I have posted about this before, but it is worth repeating. The owners of this place could have benefited from some input from a native speaker before they had the stationery printed and the signage manufactured: http://www.costlyplace.com/ And then again, perhaps not. A selfie with that name in the background would be very Instagrammable. Could make it into the same sort of success as "Cooking with Poo"

If we are playing "work it out" how about "gogobel"? Chatting on Romeo, a guy told me that he grew gogobel. It took a long, long time to work out what a gogobel is. Clues: G, K and C sounds are (to a degree) interchangeable to Thais Some consonants, such as "M" are sometimes completely swallowed by Thai speakers Thai people can sometimes use the wrong vowel in an English word Sometimes Thai people add or change a consonant at the end of a word to make it pronounceable to them.

There is, I believe, a collection company in Thailand which collects royalties from public venues playing music copyrighted outside Thailand. They sell what are, in effect, public performance licences and distribute the revenues among their clients. The equivalent organisation in the UK is the Performing Rights Society. One of the reasons you hear western music in these venues is that there is just one such company so licencing is simple. For Thai music there are more than 20 and it is easy not to have the right licences and too costly to have them all. Castro and the Venue probably do have the right licences. The licence companies do inspect and do prosecute. If you were a barber's shop in Nakhon Nowhere you could probably get away with not having one, but an entertainment venue in a tourist district? I doubt it.

My first name is Clive. I now answer to Cly, Cry, Cliv, Criv, Cliff, Criff, and many variations thereon. "Clive" is basically unpronounceable to 99% of Thais.

Maybe the girlie bars in Patpong were unwilling to sublet free space to competition. Gay bars aren't competition for what they have to offer.

You'll have more fun lying down.

I have no accumulated stuff. When I made the permanent move to Thailand, I sold, gave away or threw away everything I owned, bar the contents of 1 suitcase, which was all I took with me. It was liberating. As far as gifts go, have you and Christian never heard the expression "it's the thought that counts"?. Sometimes it requires greater graciousness and generosity of spirit to receive than it does to give. Perhaps if you were to reflect on the thoughtfulness, care and wish to do something nice for you that has gone into a gift, rather than how much use it is to you, you might feel better about receiving it? That goes double if it is one of your friends (paid or otherwise) in Thailand. You are probably dealing with people who are, financially, much worse off than you. The cost of a plate of rice and curry is a lot of money to someone who has to live on plates of rice and curry. Then the gift to you actually serves two purposes. The first, as before, is to do something nice for you. The second is to make the boy feel better about himself as not being totally dependent on you and not being in a relationship that is just about your money. Be gracious. Be grateful - the rewards will not be material, but they will be far beyond the material value of a few baht's worth of food.

I don't know about Vietnam, but in Thailand it is the Thai authorities. Without that, no funeral is possible. The body stays in the morgue. Unless you have made a Thai will nominating an executor with the specific power to make funeral arrangements (as I have, with my boyfriend as executor) It's as much for the benefit of my next of kin in England as for any other reason. Without it, they would have the task of negotiating Thai bureaucracy and arranging a funeral from several thousand miles away.

They may already know. I did not come out to friends and family until my youth was long gone. Almost all said something along the lines of "what kept you? We knew that for years". Turns out that what I had not spoken of out of delicacy for their feelings, they had not spoken of out of delicacy for mine. So it goes.

Google translate is OK but, in part because of the different structures of English and Thai, not always reliable. For anything important I do a back translation (translating English to Thai and back to English again.) If the back translation is not satisfactory, change the wording in the original until you are happy with it. Keep it as simple as you possibly can.

I'm not surprised you have problems. If you have free encounters, as you put it, then it is a personal relationship between equals. They are not employees, available at your pleasure and if you treat them as such, which you seem to do, you are asking for trouble. It would seem you sometimes get it.

Possibly, but also consider the possibility that someone whose job is to keep out or let in the right people may develop enhanced recognition skills over the years. So far as money boys go, I think they are probably often bullshitting (not always, just often). It may just be a pploy to get talking to you.

I'm sure that's right. One of the security guards on the lift at the Tarntawan once greeted me with "Welcome back". I had been there once before - three years earlier.

The problem with the UK is that they don't publish the criteria for investigation for money laundering. I have, however, heard of one instance of it happening because the individual was making transfers too frequently, regardless of their size. If possible, I would suggest opening a Thai bank account, making occasional larger transfers into that, and then using the Thai bank's internet banking or banking app to make smaller, local, transfers inside Thailand. It also means you end up with a Thai bank account and ATM card which are very useful things to have if you come here at all often (even more so if you ever move here).

For me, Bangkok is too hot in July. Pattaya seems to have a little microclimate of its own and I find it more congenial at that time of year. December time - haven't been in either place for Christmas/New Year in a long time. The last time I was in Pattaya on New Year's Eve, it was literally impossible even to get into the Boyztown soi it was so crowded. I think those days may be gone though.

I would take the phone to a True Shop, tell them I wanted a high speed/high data capacity service, but only if they could transfer my existing AIS number to their SIM. They will do it for you.

+1 for that