PeterRS

With all the information available on the internet it is staggering that so many know so little about what could condemn them to a life on medication. The guy lwh101 mentions he "only takes PREP when he is having sex/working". The CDC site says this about PREP So he only takes it when he is working. Does that mean he pops a pill the day he leaves for Pattaya and stops the day he returns? Poor guy. I bet he does not take regular HIV tests beforehand either.

Funny point when it does not even make sense! PREP is not an anti HIV medication. Antiretrovirals are medication for those with HIV. PREP is a means of reducing the risk of contracting HIV. But as explained above it is at most 92% effective. Money boys may be prepared to give in and indulge in bb because they need the extra cash. What many boys will fail to realise is that 8% plus risk. And should they become infected with HIV, many are ashamed to admit it and to get medication. 18 year old Thai boys who have just entered the sex business are often focussed merely on the cash. Condoms have been around since biblical times. They are not going to disappear, even when the researchers have finally discovered a vaccine for HIV - if they ever do. Other diseases and viruses will appear. You are way too optimistic in trying to justify your lack of condom use. I wonder if you have medical insurance - either in your home country or when you travel. If so, how would you feel about your policy if it only covered you 92% of the time. Worse, you have no idea when you might fall into that 8% no cover trap? Say you have a sudden stroke or require open heart surgery whilst travelling. How do you then react when your insurance company tells you, sorry you are in the 8% uncovered period? If you are not prepared to accept that kind of risk, I am amazed you accept the 8% or higher PREP risk.

I also lived through that entire HIV/AIDS deadly saga from its first appearance amongst a few gay men in New York, spreading to the West Coast, from there into the wider gay population and, perhaps saddest of all, to haemophiliacs initially through infected blood. Remember Ryan White? By then it was a worldwide pandemic. I had a boyfriend who died of AIDS in 1987. Even though my heart was breaking my initial concerns were taking care of him and making him as comfortable as possible in a loving environment as I watched him dying. Only after his cremation did the fear that I might be infected and join him death, let alone infect others hit me like a sledgehammer. An HIV test was soon to be available but I was too terrified to take it. I decided not to be tested. For several years I had no idea if I was living with death. Then I faced up to reality and discovered I was negative. Those years are still firmly etched in my consciousness. I can never forget them and I never ever want to live through them again. Those who visit Thailand as sex tourists should take paborns admonition to heart - REMEMBER THE BOYS. Even today, even after all the campaigns to make youngsters of both sexes aware of AIDS and the means of contracting HIV, we still sometimes read on Thai gay forums about bar guys and probably girls returning home to die. Afraid to admit they had HIV or even to get tested they still needed the money. By the time they were too weak to work, their lives were all but over. Someone infected them. Maybe a tourist, maybe a family member. I have one young Thai friend who was repeatedly raped by his uncle in his early teens. By the time he went to university he discovered he was HIV positive. As a result his choice of career was closed to him. Even his best Thai friend does not know his status because he remains afraid of the social stigma. REMEMBER THE BOYS

The choice of bb or condom is clearly an individual one. But PREP is not 100% safe. There is still a possibility that the HIV virus will get through the PREP defences. Also it seems you are not aware of the statistics re msm in Thailand, especially in Bangkok. In its June 2018 Report AVERT, the global information on HIV and AIDS website, states that the prevalence of HIV amongst msm in Bangkok is over 28%! Even if a guy comes on your back or somewhere else, the chances are high that he is still leaving other fluids inside you. https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/asia-pacific/thailand The WHO guidelines do not state that PREP stops HIV transmission. Nor do the CDC guidelines which clearly state - Up to 92% indicates it could be less than 92%. Even at an 8% chance of transmission, I am certainly not going to use PREP instead of a condom. Sure condoms can break, but how often has that happened to any member here. It happened to me once around 1989. I now always use Japanese condoms which are extremely thin and have never broken. I am not prepared to take risks with either my life or my partners life.

Excellent comments z909 I think the one above is the one most often overlooked by newbies. The first time in a Thai gogo bar where you think you might want to off a boy in a country you have never visited before can be a daunting experience. So a degree of hesitancy is quite understandable. I always recommend to visiting friends that when they see the mamasan they immediately smile and say "Sawadee krap. I havent seen you for a long time. Is everything OK?" With the number of tourists entering bars I defy any mamasan to realize he has never seen you before. He then thinks you know the ropes and will not get up to any silly business. The only other thing to watch for is when the staff return your change. Most bars present the bill in a folder. Some of these have flaps at the side or bottom which it is easy not to notice. And in quite a few cases the waiter will have slipped 2 or 3 10 baht coins in there. When that happens to me I take them out and refuse to leave a tip.

Checking the IHG site these rates do not include tax and service. So the lowest payable rate for Pattaya is 5,190.57 per night. That falls within Michael's suggested range - just. And then the rates in the other cities will also be higher.

What a total scam! And to think people actually believe this crap! When you go into hospital for an operation and require several pints of blood, you have no idea who that blood comes from. Two of this pints are just as likely to be from a 20 year old as they are from a 50 year old. Does that mean you come out of the operation feeling younger? Of course. Because the surgery has helped cure your illness. It has absolutely nothing to do with having received a younger persons blood. Someone is going to make a ton of money out of this because some people will believe anything.

Having visited recently I can confirm the apps in Kuala Lumpur are humming. Plenty of willing guys. Few looking for money.

As I understand it the problem in Bangkok really started when overseas "experts" were brought in in the 1950s and who recommended converting most klongs into wide roads. Big mistake! Now the city is prone to annual flooding from two sources - the annual high tides in the Gulf of Thailand sending water up the Chao Phraya and the drainage of floodwaters from upcountry down the Chao Phraya. The problem is that these two events occur at the same time. The 2011 floods started a long way (100 miles?) upstream of the city and then swept south. Nothing could stop them. A Netherlands like dyke system around the city would be ideal. But who would pay the billions of $$ required?

Does this indicate you tip the boys in advance?

I do not know any airline that sends charters to Thailand or any other country and then parks them. Their objective is a quick turnaround for aircraft, pilots and cabin crew and then get back to home base asap. The exception will be some carriers on longer hauls - both chartered and scheduled - who do not carry two crews and do now have a crew based in the destination city/country. They have no option. International rules mandate maximum pilot work hours. Some scheduled airlines do have an aircraft flying in late evening and then stay at the gate until an early morning departure. But in those cases they would never have their aircraft parked at a bridge gate requiring payment for all that time. That could cost well over $10,000 if not a lot more. If the airport does not require the gates overnight, I expect it will waive bridge gate parking fees rather than bother towing the aircraft to a park space. Either that or it has a substantial rebate scheme.

I am sure budget carriers are normally much happier with lower bus gate fees. On the other hand, these add to their turnaround time which is so vital to budget carriers. Some at DMK have only a 30 minute turnaround. I somehow doubt that can be achieved at bus gates. Re overnighting, my understanding is that hardly any major carriers will even consider this. They offload their passengers and the aircraft are then towed to a parking area before being towed back again an hour or so before the scheduled departure. Does this not partly bear out my view? Economy passengers are far less concerned about bus gates than business and first. But - and it is a big but - if the incoming plane is even 30 minutes late, the extra time taken to get from the bus gate can make the difference between catching a connecting flight and missing it. I am not against the concept of bus gates - just as long as I do not have to use one! As for transferring at BKK, I would never even consider it. Ill take Changi, Incheon, Hong Kong and others any time.

Great story. I once had a rich client who always stayed in top hotels. He told me his policy always was to tip the head concierge and the room boy as soon as he arrived, not at the end of his stay. He said he never once had anything other than great service! Tipping is the one reason why I dislike the USA. Paborn mentions tipping started in England. I frankly do not care where it started because it clearly crossed the Atlantic at some point and it is in the USA where it has gotten so totally out of hand. 20% to 25% to a restaurant waiter? To me that is a kind of madness. Sure I realise the tips are so high because the restaurant owners are such mean bastards they will not pay their staff a living wage. My answer to that is how come they will not pay wait staff but they seem perfectly happy to pay all the kitchen staff better wages? Same in hotels. Why am I expected to tip the room cleaners? With rare exceptions I leave my room very tidy. I hardly ever see these ladies and they probably spend no more than 5 minutes in my room. But if tipping originated in England, who brought the tipping syndrome to most other parts of the world? Unquestionably Americans! Because they are used to it at home, they exported the habit and now it is expected almost everywhere. Want to see a world without tipping? As z909 says in an earlier post, take a trip to Japan. There they not only do not tip, they are offended if you offer one. Here in Thailand there has grown this expectation in the major cities that tipping is expected. Perhaps the Vietnam War and all those GIs flooding into the country on their R&R and happy to splash the cash are to blame. As for me, in the bars in Thailand I tip roughly what I believe to be the going rate, although I never really check what that is. If I have a great time, the tip reflects that. If it is not so great, the tip is less but still good. After all the boys have to make a living and it is not their fault if I pick a dud. That is as much my fault as it is his. Some will consider this the fault of the mamasan for not telling this guy was a dud. Huh? The mamasans duty is to the bar owner first. He may seem all smarmy and helpful to me as the customer. But he knows he is unlikely to see 95% or more of the customers again. So do I expect him to be an honest broker? Nope. We also have to face facts. Tipping a gogo boy is not a tip. It is a fee for prostitution wrapped up in the fiction of a tip. So bar boys are a bit like waiters in the USA. They cannot live on what the bar pays them so the customer has to pay. It is sometimes a rather curious conundrum. Why are some posters reasonably happy to splash out a 20% tip in a Dallas restaurant but resent giving a decent tip to a bar boy? 4 people dining in a decent restaurant with a bottle of decent wine in the US is likely to result in a tip of $60-70. Funny. Isnt that about the going rate for an off? As for what others tip, I really could care less.

That is one view for sure. On the other hand, look at some of the airline and BKK review sites and you see a lot of angry passenger complaints about arriving back at BKK in the late evening. With many airbridge gates tied up for departing long haul flights, a lot of regional TG arrivals are parked at bus gates. How many times is there a delay getting buses to the aircraft> How many times is an incoming aircraft stuck on a taxiway for 30 or more minutes waiting for a scheduled airbridge gate to be freed up because the outgoing flight has been delayed? Too many. Tourists travelling in economy class whose final destination is BKK are probably not too concerned about such delays because they experience them once a year. It is the regular business travellers who make up the real income for airlines that get really pissed off. After a long haul flight, the last thing I want is bus gate during monsoon rains or a taxiway delay. I just want to get through immigration and into a taxi fast. There is another issue. What about passengers connecting at BKK to other parts of the region? The AOT keeps on claiming its aim for BKK is to be the best hub for the region. As it continues to tumble down regional airport rankings, constructing terminals with minimal airbridges seems to me like shooting itself in both feet. Being a hub means working smoothly as a hub and spoke operation like DFW, ORD, ATL etc. How many bus gates are found in those airports? Not many in my experience. Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Taipei seem to have just a handful each.

From a quick glance at the various designs, it appears the number of airbridge gates must have been dictated by the AOT brief. It also appears that there will a considerable number of parking bays requiring bus transport to the terminal. Compare that to Changi in Singapore. The existing 4 terminals have 117 air bridge gates for 82 million passengers. The new Terminal 5 now being constructed will cater for another 30-50 million passengers but its number of airbridges has not yet been determined. BKK is expecting 65 million passengers this year against the design capacity of 45 million but has only 51 airbridges. It already operates with an additional 69 bus gates. The Terminal 1 extension looks like it will have 30 gates. But that still leaves 39 bus gates and it assumes no additional flights. Since passenger number and flights are estimated to increase that clearly means more bus gates! Yet the AOT has announced that even with the new extension the design capacity will be 60 million. Can no one in the AOT do simple math?

As suggested earlier,, apps like Hornet severely restrict the number of profiles you can view unless you pay for the premium service. Same with Grindr. Planet Romeo gives you many more profiles and more information on each (if the member has uploaded some). I agree with the other poster above about the new version being more complicated and user unfriendly. I dislike it a lot. I found Blued popular in Bangkok and gave me hundreds of profiles all very close by. Unfortunately whatever your age you will get inundated with hits from China. But its easy to just delete these or have one reply for all. When you reply in English the app will translate it in Chinese at the other end. It also has a built in English/Thai/English translation facility.

I thought Cathay had moved to Terminal 8. This has 29 gates with an extension concourse rather like the one being built at BKK. But it shares the terminal with other OneWorld carriers. No idea if that means occasionally having to use a bus.

BKK is a pretty lousy airport if only because of the distances that have to be travelled on foot. People movers are all very well except that most people have little clue how to use them. One side should be for those happy to stand and look at the scenery. The other for people who want to move. BKK has a lot of people movers. If you arrive on an A380 or with a couple of other planes in the same Aisle, there is inevitably a scrum of people who quite happily clog the people movers so that walking becomes totally impossible. If your seat is at the back of the plane and you want to try and get nearer the front of the Immigration queue, mostly you have to forget the people movers and just plain run. The Chinese are often to blame for this, but not exclusively so. I have seen many a western couple stand on both sides of a people mover totally unaware that others may wish to pass them. So if BKK is going to depend on yet more people movers rather than some form of more automated transport to get passengers from the main Terminal to that long terminal extension, I can see a great many really frustrated passengers. God forbid they use lifts up and down as at Heathrow Terminal 5. Anyone used to Chinese ideas of queuing will be in for massive frustration. The other issue is check-in times. To get to the new extension and then along it to wherever your gate might be will add I guess at least 20 - 30 minutes. A look at the queues for some airlines check in desks and it is obvious that vast numbers of passengers still do not get boarding passes in advance. Plus the queues at some airlines bag drop counters can also be very long. Find yourself behind one couple with a couple of connecting flights and a problem with their ticket and it is as bad as normal check in. With those upstairs Security lines often clogged at rush hours and the same at the Immigration desks downstairs, I can see a lot of people being very late arriving for their flights.

I am very much behind the times - and thanks DivineMadman for clarifying the difference between the Terminal 1 extension and Terminal 2. Terminal 2 seems so small it surely is impossible to be for the country major carrier? Can you imagine all the flights departing in the morning and the late evening. There are not nearly enough gates. Besides, TG will normally be in the same terminal as other Star Alliance carriers. That is totally impossible in that little terminal. Maybe it is mainly to be for airlines with smaller aircraft like Bangkok Airways. I am still curious about passengers getting from the main terminal to the extension. I assume there will have to be at least one underground train as at most international airports.

That concept photo is virtually identical to Osaka's Kansai. So what are that video and photos posted earlier? They are nothing like the concept photo. Is there a third terminal being built?

Space between runways is always inevitably limited but I just can not agree with that analysis. Any terminal that permits aircraft parking gates only on one long side is a disaster for passengers. Looking again at the photos, it seems that there may be gates also at one end which makes a bit more sense. But suggesting there is no room between the runways for a new terminal with plane access to gates on both of its long sides is just not true. There is tons of room between the runways to fit an oblong shaped terminal with plane gates on both of the long sides. After all, terminal 1 is plenty wide enough to have to have gates on the outside and the inside of both long arms of the H. As this drawing of the existing terminal shows, 4 of the concourse areas permit plane gates on both sides - B, C E and F. The other three are only one side access. Now take the distance between the end of B to the end of F. That sits between the two runways and still has room for taxiways beyond each. So that width is definitely available further south. The problem is it would probably have to be further away from the main Terminal. Has no-one ever heard of Terminal trains like they have in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Hong Kong, Tokyo and goodness knows how many other airports? Better still, why not copy Osaka's Kansai airport with a Terminal plum in the middle between the rrunways. This would require two buildings but turn the buildings in the diagram through 90 degrees and there will still be plenty of room between the runways at BKK.

My first thought? What a waste of space! Not within the terminal, but access for planes. Surely the point of a terminal is to permit as many planes as possible to park at its bays. So there should be bays on as many sides as possible. Most newish oblong shaped terminals that I have seen permit planes to park on both of the long sides. DMK and LHR Terminal 5 are two exceptions, although one has aisles jutting out from one long side and the other has two two long-sided satellites. It seems to me a design like this one will inevitably mean a lot of bus gates.

He paid 3000 baht. I think unlikely you get rooms at the Dusit for that price. Could be be the Crowne Plaza I reckon. Or even the Montien which had a no joiners policy when I stayed there.

Many thanks Spoon for all that very useful information.

Try the Blued app. It requires a short selfie video for photo verification purposes before your profile photo is posted. Many thousands of of Thai guys are moving to this app because it has built in Thai/English translation.