forrestreid

There appears to be many stories nowadays of young foreign tourists who have an accident in Thailand, and find that their health insurance does not pay for it. I see that the insurance company are refusing to pay out after looking in to the facts of the case, although it is not explained whether this was because they think the hotel was at fault, or the young man was, or whatever. I wonder was it just because he had alcohol in his blood? I remember hearing about reading British tourist who fell on some stairs after an evening out in Thailand, he was denied an insurance payout as the medical records (requested by the insurer) indicated some alcohol, his blood. But the young British guy said he only had a few drinks and was far from drunk. He said that the stumble on the stairs was purely bad luck. The question is what is regarded as so much alcohol as to be reckless? Obviously young people going out for a night in Thailand will usually drink, if they walking home to their accommodation and fall, how much alcohol should they have in their blood before it negates their policy. Presumably higher that the maximum that you can drink and drive with, but how much higher? This is probably something the insurance regulator in Britain (and Ireland too) could look at. Considering that many young people are going to Thailand and paying insurance, one wonders what they are getting out of it, based on the fact that they are much more likely to claim for an accident than, say, getting a heart attack.

I have not been in Pattaya since before Covid, but i have been keeping an eye for reports of some karaoke places with male hosts. A popular one at the moment (or earlier this year at least) is Friendly Club Karaoke. It is on Soi Korpai (often spelled Khopai) located just south of the junction of junction of Soi Korpai and South Pattaya Road. If you do a search for "27 Khopai Rd Pattaya" on google maps it will bring you to the location. Another one, closer to central Pattaya, is Jacky Karaoke. It is located in the last side street before Pattaya Tai (South Pattaya Road) meets Third Road (It is called "Pattaya Tai 18 Alley" on Google maps). They are very active on Facebook at the moment. A search for "Jacky karaoke" on FB will bring them up. They posted the below pic today. Probably one of the straightest looking line-up of guys I have seen in any place, presumably the market they aim for are bargirls just off duty. However, i am sure they will be happy enough to drink with you at least, and some will be willing to go off with you also.

Thank you for another great trip report Vinapu. Well written trip reports like yours really are the the best of this forum.

Dont worry about it, everyone can get a bit burnt out at times, even if they are doing things they enjoy. I sometimes get a sudden day of lassitude on holiday when I have no motivation to do anything, even if I am in a city that is full of attractions I normally would love to visit. It passes.... Brilliant trip report by the way. Really enjoyed the pictures - always add a bit to a trip report

If everybody took that view, there would be very few reviews of anything on Tripadviser...

Reader, I must confess to be somewhat perplexed as to what exactly you think Leroy82 said that was inappropriate. If people working at the ground floor bar are available to take off, I think it is pretty much understood that what it is for. Presumably anybody that knows the guy concerned works in the bar, and who also reads this forum, would already know that he goes off with customers and (presumably) has some form of sex with them. I think it is generally understood that a guy who goes off with customers is providing a service, and could be either gay or straight. Unless I am missing something obvious here...

Steve Rosse has his own Youtube channel which is a bit off the wall, but entertaining sometimes too. If people are feeling nostalgic for Thailand of the Eighties, a straight Youtuber called "Karl's Thailand" has an interesting collection of videos where he provides reminisces and commentary over photos he took during travels in Thailand from 1987 to 1992. Its better than it sounds - he has a cool Cockney geezer accent too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns5YafVjhzU&t=38s He also has loads of videos where he explores out-of he way places in Thailand in the present day - interesing if the thoughst of exploring deepest Isaan fascinates you...

Yes, really like the "day and night" photo of the Petronas Towers

Your thoughts are very much on Thai moneyboys these days Sydneyboy (sorry, Olddaddy). The cold of the antipodean winter getting you down?

An interesting series of posts

No personal experience, but I believe that it is quite a hub for male escorts, despite homosexuality being completely illegal. I see that there are at least 100 guys in Dubai on Hunqz, for example. I would be very discreet, if i was you.

It has been reported on another board that the previous owners of JQK Bar are renovating and re-opening Cupidol Bar in Boyztown.

Note that the issues with the Covid cert were all more than a year ago...

Glad to read that the history of that time is being kept alive

Now the general election has been set for the 23rd July, so it looks like bringing this legislation through will fall to the next administration. At the moment it seems that a PP and Vox coalition is most likely next government. How would they feel about the legislation, does anyone know?

I visited the original Thermas - in Barcelona - over two successive nights at the end of April. First Night - Wednesday On the first night, I got there about 6 pm. I don’t see that many guys about - I would say there was about seven guys for hire, and maybe same amount of clients. In particular I noticed three rather feminine young men, who I first though were rentboys, but then realised that they were clients. They tended to stay in their own group and made no attempt to hire that I saw. I am not sure if they went into the wrong sauna, or just wanted to have a look around at the scene (of course, for all I really know, they may have been sated from a big orgy with a dozen rentboys just before i arrived). Some of the escort guys were eating and seemed to have retired from the hunt, for the time being at least. I was only approached by a Nigerian guy and a South American guy (cannot remember exactly which country he said) named Juan. I was not hugely taken with either guy. I agreed to go into a room with Juan for massage, which ended in mutual masturbation and he gave me a BJ. We agreed on €50 and I gave him €60 - we are in the room from maybe 40 minutes altogether. The sauna was a bit quieter than I anticipated, so I asked Juan if it had been busier earlier in the day, and he said it was. So the next day Thursday I made an effort to be there by 4 pm. Second Night - Thursday There was a bigger crowd of guys this time. Maybe 15 escorts and slightly more customers. Several escorts approached me, but none very aggressively. I had a chat with Juan, who was there again, and seemed anxious for repeat business. In general the feeling I got was that they rentboys were nearly all South American guys. However, I did not like to question too much if I wasn’t interested in them, as I didn’t want to be seen to be "leading them on", so to speak. I went for a dip in the little pool there ( a very pleasant feature which few mention in reviews) and saw a rather moody looking guy sitting in the seats in the corner at that level. He was a rather handsome, masculine, Eastern European looking kind of guy, so I went over and said hello. He was the only guy I took the initiative to approach in the Sauna. He turned out to be a Russian guy called Ivan. We we had a chat and we agreed to go to a room. The only free rooms were both very dark and small, so I decided to splash out €10.50 for a private room The main advantage this was that it had sheets on the bed, and you could turn the lights up a lot, all the better for appreciating Ivan's fine physique! Ivan told me he was straight, and top only. He had previously been a professional footballer. But now he was unemployed, and needed money. We agreed to €60 for him to give me a massage and mutual masturbation. The massage was a bit hard for me - he told me he had been trained in proper sports massage, but I am more used to the light rubbing you get in Thai sexy massage place as a prelude to the "afters". He then offered to fuck me. However, I was not in the mood for that, so I just told him I wanted him to cum. He said that he wanted another €30 or €40 for that, so I decided not to bother (there is nothing as desire-killing, as a guy who starts to negotiate in the middle of a session). In fairness to him, however, we had not discussed it before we entered the room, and I know it would probably hinder his ability to do so with a later client. So I didn’t hold that against him Instead I just got him to wank me until I came. In the room, he seemed a little morose. I asked him if he was thinking of going back to Russia, and he said he was afraid to at the moment, with the possibility of conscription into Putin's war machine. When we ended our session though, he accepted his €60 with a big smile, and volunteered to give me his phone number so we could arrange a session outside Thermas. So I think he was happy with his 40 minutes work and remuneration overall. However, as I was flying out the next day, I couldn’t take him up on the offer. All in all, although it was not the most exciting sex experiences I have had, it was very pleasant and relaxing The rentboys all stayed out of the clients locker area, and it felt a very safe environment for both the rentboys and clients.

Depends on how he does things. He may be willing to come to an implicit agreement with the military that he will be allowed to take office as long as he does not interfere with the things the Generals hold dear, from the Army budget on down. It could be, from their point of view, that he would be seen as more palatable than a member of the Shinawatra clan, who one would have expected to end up as the leader of the largest party, and perhaps prime minister, until the results came in.

The internal computer system of the BTS can work out how much the fare is, and (because it recognises that the same Mastercard was scanned twice, and what stations they were scanned at) it then charges your card the correct amount. I THINK the way it works in London is that when you scan on at say, Holborn, it puts a "hold" on your credit card for the maximum daily amount on the underground system (say, £20) and then if you get off at a station where the due fare is only, say, £4.50, it then releases the hold and charges you the correct fare. So if you forget to swipe out on leaving the train station,you might get charged the maximum fare. I would guess there is a similar system in BKK,

Interesting to see what the parties are offering. It would have been helpful if he had indicated also the expected percentage vote range for the parties - some of them are polling in the low single digits, while Pheu Thai are polling the best by far. Perhaps that is why they tended to shy away from specifics in their promises. I must admit I had wry smile when Pat said that they are promising to make coups harder in the future. I am sure they would love to implement that one! As an aside, the rest of Pats channel is very interesting for people with an interest places to see in Bangkok.

Sorry, could you clarify if the above mentioned orthopox outbreak is the same as the mpox (aka monkeypox) outbreak from last year, or some other strain?

Some really informative replies on this thread for guys who are planning what bars to favour on their trip to Bangkok.

I remember about 20 years ago, when I first started thinking about going to Thailand, and I started reading the weekly column on the Stickman Thai travel advice website In his news roundup section, he frequently had a story from a western newspaper about a tourist (usually a young British male) who was stuck in a Thai hospital after being in a motorbike crash, or a water-sports accident. At that time, the typical situation seemed to be that they had no travel insurance. Stickman often used to tut-tut over this and bemoan the fact that so many tourists came to Thailand without travel insurance. Flash forward twenty years and there are still links in the Stickman column to news stories about people stuck in Thailand after having catastrophic accidents, and relatives starting GoFundMe pages, etc. But now you find that the typical tourist profiled on such stories did indeed have travel insurance, except the insurance companies have refused to pay out, for the reasons outlined in the posts above. In many cases, the guys affected are hardly out of their teens. Perhaps not having the life experiences of some of the posters above about how you can get into sticky situations very quickly in a foreign country. I think travel and insurance companies should be forced to emphasize these issues to people buying travel insurance for the first time. I remember on one occasion when I booked a flight to Thailand with a travel agency. I was asked if I wanted to book travel insurance with them also, and I said I did. As I’d heard the stories, I asked about being insured to travel on a motorcycle. The young woman working at the travel agency told me I would be covered, presuming I had the requisite driving license (no mention was made that I would need an international one). When I asked about if I was a passenger on a motorbike taxi, she became a bit perplexed and after a bit of humming and hawing suggested that this would be covered by the motorbike taxi drivers public liability insurance! Perhaps she wasn’t that well informed about the likelihood of getting money from your motorbike taxi drivers insurance in Thailand. I’ve now got multi-trip travel insurance. I just looked at the terms and conditions, and I can’t find any mention of a motorbike, although I did find a general provision saying that the policy will be invalidated if I carry out any “reckless” action I imagine the likelihood more than 1% of 18 to 30 year-olds knowing what their coverage really is, even if you have insurance, when arriving in Thailand is probably zero. However, I am sure the insurance companies have a little appetite to clarify these things, quick and all as they are to take the young peoples money.

Thanks for that, Gaz69

I note an interesting mix of descriptors and minimum prices on the twitter page of 15M massage. Most of the guys are described as "straight". The minimum tip for an hour for them seems to be usually 800 baht. One guys is described as "gay" - his minimum is 800 also. Another guy is described as "top" - his minimum is 1000. Yet another is described as "man" (a gay top perhaps - then why not just top?) - his minimum is 1000 Seems being more than just str8 or gay earns you more money....

Glad to see a review of a Foam Massage. In the straight Thai scene, they are called "Soapies" and are very common. That is not the situation for gay massages, not sure why. Helios seems to occupy the same premises as the old Blue Massage, which also used to specialise in them.