NIrishGuy

You'll be glad to hear that according to my ( NHS employed and based on an NHS ward daily) BF they ARE now clamping down a lot on medical tourism and people turning up trying to get treated FOC. Apparently they DO check immigration status and entitlement now as a matter of course BEFORE any treatment is carried out. I think in cases of medical emergency the treatment is still carried out no matter what the persons status etc, but for things like child birth ( where mothers were flying in before hand and then turning up heavily pregnant to get both free treatment and perhaps more importantly VISA /Passport rights for their child THAT too seems to have been tightened up - about bloody time eh !

What a very smart idea - so the authorities want to keep a check on EXACTLY where each farang in the Country is staying and come up with their super plan to make that happen - so, you go on a bit of a tour with your BF, listing a few cities as you go, staying in each for a night or two, diligently posting off your TM30 in each city as you go, you get home a week later, just as your TM30's are probably arriving at the immigration office ( if you're lucky) , probably then to be ignored by some civil servant for a few days more as then read where you've been but not of course where you ARE ( which one assumes was the whole point) - a great plan, obviously VERY well thought out - NOT. Perhaps we could ask could we do away with the TM30 end of things and just send them postcards saying how much we were enjoying our trips in each place instead perhaps ?

No harm to the Thai authorities but if I lived there I think I'd tell them to get stuffed and move and take my money with me ! Talk about how to piss off your expats ! if it wasn't for our ( usually) white skin making us so obvious to them I think they'd happily be asking you / us all to wear yellow armbands with a large F for Farang on them next ! Ridiculous law - and it's aimed at WHO exactly - criminals ? - like they will give a fuck about complying with that ! So, an expat who's lived there maybe 20 years with his partner decides to drive with his Thai wife or husband from one Thai city to another. this being maybe just an hour or two up the road to perhaps visit a sick relative and they they're required to report their every move and their latest whereabouts and where exactly they're staying to the the authorities - for WHAT!? So they know where we all are !? Are their expats really all THAT dangerous I wonder ? - And this of course in the usual fucked up Thai way that the App they suggest you use doesn't seem to work anyway, their emails are ignored ( apparently) and in the case above it incurs a 150KM round trip to go visit their offices to get the run around even more and maybe a fine if they feel like it - yeah, fuck THAT !

One thing we can all rest easy about - boys may not know their postal addresses but they sure as hell know their own bank account details and sort codes plus their nearest Western Union office to allow us to deposit money quickly should the need arise !

Thanks for that update and it reinforces what I thought i.e that when you hear "ohhh you can live "cheap/ cheaper" in thailand" that that may not actually be just so true - depending on your lifestyle of course. But our lifestyles sounds similar enough to me to tell me that I can say whilst I might blow another 4 / 6 mill a year or so that I choose to piss up against a wall just now moving to the likes of Thailand wouldn't necessarily provide me with any particularly large drop in overhead from living say here in the UK just now for example and so the reason if any for moving shouldn't be one of finance but more of just one of "preference" as to the location of my residence - and that's a good fact to know.

Just like in the movies eh.......If you build it they will Cum !

Like most things you encounter in Bangkok that are hung - just give it long enough and they usually let you down eventually - all just only a matter of timing as too when !

So sad to see :-( However another part of me that is so pissed off about the closure was that they did it just after FINALLY getting their plastic rain covering properly erected along the length of the Soi ! Myself and many another farang friend sat over a beer many a night mid perving over the cute guys whilst watching the various incarnations of the various bits of plastic they'd had draped across the Soi previously, with those usually flapping pointlessly in the wind and usually totally failing in stopping much ingress of rain. Also fun was sitting perhaps during especially heavy downpours and watching the plastic fill like small lakes along the Soi and then waiting for the boys to empty those with a brush pushed up from below and that usually over the head of some SO CALLED straight arsehole farang, who had seemingly "inadvertently" decided to walk the length of the Soi "by mistake" whilst doing their whole (fake and fooling no one as to why they were there) aggressive "DO NOT TOUCH ME" act to each and every cute bar tout who grabbed them in passing whilst just doing their job. So, after all those years and after all the (very drunken) very highly thought technical plans drawn out on the back of bar mat ( large amount of tongue in cheek there of course :-) with us advising on the perfect roof shelter, there eventually the Thai's FINALLY got around to ACTUALLY going and doing it - and THEN the closed the whole bloody Soi down ! How VERY Thai of them ! :-)

That's interesting and thanks for posting that as always good to get a REAL handle on what it ACTUALLY costs to live somewhere compared to the guys who seem to get off telling you how cheaply they can live somewhere, even though they're living BELOW the level of a local half times and have little in the way of luxuries in their life ( by their choice or maybe more necessity it seems).. Can I be a little nosey ( without intruding too much into your personal business of course) but just for clarity re your above, I'm assuming your medical is on top of that 80, 000 and there's a few other bits and pieces so I quickly rounded up your figures to around the 1.1 mill mark if that's about right ? So ( and again without being too mosey) I'm assuming that that you generally are the main bread winner in the relationship and so are budgeting / "paying for two" generally in everything you do together - again that's just to more help get a handle on that is that 1.1 mill fig "about right' for TWO people living together there or is that only to cover YOUR portion of any living expenses. As you pointed out too thankfully you've no longer any home or car payments going out of that amount either so if one was to add those back in all of a sudden that rosey picture some of us might have of us all moving and "living cheap" in Thailand isn't perhaps quite as cheap and rosy as we all might think - and again as you mentioned god forbid you get seriously sick in terms of that 25% of the bill end of things too i Thanks for posting that - an eye opener for sure - I wonder do others share the same rough monthly / yearly outgoings as there seems to be SUCH a large divergence between figures when you talk to people ......but that is just life I guess and depends how we all chose to live.

Well thank god someone else thinks that as after hearing people talking about the whole "oh they're blind so they're so much more in tune with your body etc" I tried it and couldn't walk straight for days afterwards ( and not the the usual reasons of not walking straight after a Thailand HE massage I stress :-). Whilst the guy followed all the basic patterns he was of course literally finding his way with his fingers and so had to press hard enough to feel where he was going. I do have an on going back problem and sure enough he pressed right into the couple of nerve ends that he shouldn't and by god I suffered for it later. Plus call me a cynic but I spent half the time wondering was he ACTUALLY even blind or was this just ye another of one of Thailand's many low grade low impact scams ! ( I think he was for sure, I was just sore and not feeling very charitable that day :-) So, yes I concur, blind massage for me anyway I'd definitely steer clear from - and actually same re muscle massage as those guys think they've something to prove. in my experience even the lightest massage, if carried out correctly by someone who knows what they're doing can have the very best results meaning you walk away with relieved muscles AND a relaxed back instead of wincing ( or should that be mincing !?) down the Soi every other step for the next two days.

Great read, thanks for posting CurtisD, more to come I hope !

Flying "out' is fine and I can bare that, it's the flying "in" part that I flat refuse to do now unless I have ZERO other options as if I've to stand in one more queue of rude and pushy Chinese people all fighting to get through passport control or in the taxi rank I swear I just might kill some of them next time as its been pretty damned close now a few times !

That was the carpets !? I always just assumed it was many years of cum built up within the very fabric ( and on the fabrics) of the building itself ! More seriously thought, yes, I know exactly what you mean as I too felt the same about that welcome home smell......or again perhaps that WAS just cum as both make me feel equally at home in the Tarntawan I guess :-)

Just on the point of testing and my reading recently that Thai authorities have boosted the Country’s existing STI infection / treatment surveillance system is anyone aware do the hospitals etc still ask for a copy of your ID / Passport if you present to get tested there ? I know this certainly was the case in Bkk when I presented a few times and I was able to bluff it with various excuses about passports being left in hotels etc and gave a duff name etc ( to access the tests which all came back negative thankfully) but is this still the case I wonder as it must surely be yet another reason for some farang at least there NOT to bother testing ? Although I laugh as when I ring my local UK NHS anonymous STI clinic for random regular testing the very first question they ask is "what's your name and best contact number please' - so much for anonymous ! Oh and before anyone asks why bother giving a duff name this was a few years back now and there was talk ( and I still wouldn't totally dismiss it) of authorities holding lists of farang ( and Thai) name and address details ( of people within Thai or oversees) visiting or living in the Country with HIV / Aids etc so that "someday" should they ever decide to farang at least are simply turned away at the airport to reduce risk / cost to Thailand - paranoid perhaps but back then at least that was ( I felt) a fairly reasonable possibility ( see Singapore for example where 14,200 people had their HIV status "leaked" - albeit not by the Government, but is shows the lists had already been generated for "whatever" use later on at the whim of whatever Government might or might not get into power.

To answer your above question and just for total clarity in case people reading this later might end up with a false sense of security - PrEP doesn’t prevent other STDs at ALL - it just just reduces the chances of picking up HIV - nothing more than that - hence it's a good idea to still always use condoms, unless you've decided that you're happy playing Russian roulette and risk picking up one or many of some of the other ( increasingly fairly serious) STI's that are out there now these days. https://www.onemedical.com/blog/live-well/safe-sex-prep

I think the problem there is that in general it seems that blood is / can only be kept for about 6 weeks in total before it's classed as usable so I guess to store it for 4 of those 6 weeks wouldn't be a option for large stocks perhaps.

Which I guess does give some credit too and backs up the need for the ( in the UK anyway) three month deferral period between a gay man having sex and being allowed to donate blood. Of course it appears in this case the donor simply wasn't honest about his timeline, which of course simply backs up the complaints and prejudices of the straight community about gay men being able to donate blood at ALL - and you can see their point perhaps. Mind you the same could of course be said for said "straight" guys who are out fucking anything that moves too including other men ( MSM) or ladyboys or just plain old women who are fucking around with (lots) of other men who are all doing the same too and THEY dont have to declare and desist for 3 months before donating - but I guess the States argument ( again probably quite correctly) is that as gay men as we are the higher risk group that is why such rules are needed. its a tough one, on one hand one wants to argue for equality in all things, but when there's a sound medical logic behind medical decisions I personally think the three month deferral period os probably fair enough in the bigger scheme of things - my only thought might be that perhaps they should actually go in reverse and make it apply to EVERYONE to ensure things are as safe as they can be for everyone - mind you even if they did of course all you need is the one liar / forgetful person as appeared to happen here and you're right back at square one again. So, I guess in the absence of any solution or safer remedy the simple answer is to WEAR A CONDOM to minimise the risk to oneself ( and others should you be unlucky enough to have picked something / anything up that is still undiagnosed.

I see you're in the UK - if so consider maybe applying for a MONZO card ( link below), they really are very good. Basically a debit card, but they charge NO international exchange fee charges and ( the best part for me anyway) when you use it the transaction INSTANTLY flashes up on your mobile phone screen, showing what you've bought and where and the amount charged by the place both in the local currency and also in UK Sterling cost too - so it's a great way of keeping tabs on whats being charged to your card "live" - and helps you stop being scammed as you'll notice instantly as they try it ! There are also several other nice features there too about showing your record of where and when you spent money ( handy if you want to find a place again days or months later). Just remember the card is linked to your UK phone so if you go away and change your sim over you'd need to be updating the app contact over to that new number then too until you get home again ( I presume as I haven't had to actually do that yet myself) https://monzo.com

And then thankfully to balance such silly extremes out ..... we have Christian being up the rear - quite literally !! Lol

Sad news for him.

And now Banana Bar has just confirmed their earlier than planned Soi Twilight bar closure too - very sad, so many happy memories there with their end of an Era party on the 29th March :-(

Actually in the UK at least I believe the threshold for additional scrutiny being required IS the £10k and over mark, so just take care that you're not quietly flagging up your own account for further attention else where if there's movements there you'd rather HRMC etc weren't looking at "too" closely ! I'm guessing it's fairly much little odds now as it seems HMRC etc have some super duper new joined up computer / software that is already pulling info about us from ALL sorts of places that we wouldn't immediately think if such as flight ticket purchases, ALL electronic money transfers, investment income and interest, property deeds held with rent due on them and an absolute ton of other stuff - I actually watched a programme about it a while back, all very interesting / scary IF true. Or a damned good well placed fake news story they've released to encourage people to play straight. I do know from conversations with HMRC staff that versions of the above DO actually exist so I'm guessing there is some truth to it all as well. Oh.....a quick google search confirms the existence of same it seems ....... https://www.companydebt.com/hmrc-tax-problems/hmrcs-connect-computer-system-used-tax-compliance/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tax/return/taxman-unleashes-snooper-computer-information-does-have/

Ha, I'm glad someone else noticed as I thought it was just my OCD kicking in, but yes you're absolutely right, almost impossible to close the door without losing a knuckle each and every bloody time !

Moses said - "Good try. But I will not buy it dear.' Hmmm? There was no attempt at "trying" anything, dont be getting all defensive again there Moses. I (wrongly it seems) assumed that you farmed out your server hosting and back up etc to another company to do and so assumed that it was their systems that had fallen over and also assumed that they'd simply reloaded from the wrong back up ( as I said in my post). As apparently that's not the case and it is just you yourself hosting on your own server there then fair enough, these things happen I guess and if you've only lost 12 hours of posts then it's not the end of the world. My point about maybe losing random pearls of wisdom "forever" by posters was of course totally tongue in cheek as I doubt the world revolves on anything posted on any of the boards ( no matter how much some posters might like to think otherwise about the importance of their and our collective posts !)

Looks like someone has reloaded from an old back up - lets just hope that they HAD made their more recent back ups as they should have and that it's just a matter of they've selected the wrong file to go from otherwise it looks like posts will be forced back to 10th November perhaps and anything past that lost maybe - fingers crossed. I'm sure Moses will be having words with those responsible, either for the breakdown or lack of swift action to repair and or replacement of correct last back up as for any server company to tell you "sorry it's the weekend we'll have a look at that but it might be Monday before we get anywhere with it - and then install the wrong / an old backup " maybe wouldn't be a company you'd instantly be thinking of hosting your site on. But maybe there's a simple explanation and all will be repaired and updated back to normal again shortly - lets hope so anyway - as I dont know WHAT we'll all do if even just some of the many pearls of ( alleged) wit and wisdom that are shared there between some of us are lost FOREVER never to be recovered !! Ohhh the very thought if that - God FORBID!!! lol