macaroni21

@reader these two shops don't say whether the boys are top or T&B. I vaguely recall you (or maybe someone else) saying that one shop's boys are all T&B. Was it you who said that? If so, which shop?

Found this: basically saying the same thing. While businesses put their QR code on their website (if they have one) so that anyone anywhere can scan it, individuals do not. Yet the work around is given as: send your QR code to the individual so he can add you - which is quite laughable coz if one has not friended the other, how to send? If both parties are already connected via another app, e.g. WhatsApp, sure, the Line QR code can be sent, but if they're already mutually on another app, why would they need Line? Head scratcher!

Can you clarify: what exactly is not permitted? If the gogoboy or business is in Thailand, but my Line number is not a Thai number, I can no longer add the person or business as "friend"? @Raposa is saying that one can do so by scanning the QRcode, which seems to contradict.

Thanks for the detailed information about virtual cards. Two thoughts occurred to me: I'm not all that keen to have too many things concentrated in my phone. A couple of years ago, a friend dropped his phone into a river while he was on a ferry... you can imagine how the rest of his holiday went. Secondly, I too have been using preloaded debit cards more than credit cards when travelling. It's a good way to manage risk especially in countries where trust is not totally justified. @bkkmfj2648 the thought that a proper airline like Cebu Pacific can compromise your data is scary.

Thank you for sharing with such honesty. If it's any consolation, even the most experienced get taken by surprise by how our choices turn out. For example, one can have a great session and feel a good connection with the hire until at the end, he starts demanding extra money, with a threatening posture. Or one can have the sweetest guy agreeable to bottom until you see his bottom full of anal warts. In a way, it might even be better that you do not have a trip that is all roses. It makes you more realistic about expectations and unknowns, though as you said, there are lessons that can be learned too so one can reduce risk somewhat in future. That said, I went ouch when I read about the cost.

Absolutely. All ye who engage in adultery shall come to no good end. (Butterflies, who have made no marital promises to anyone, are safe).

While I have had similar experiences with unauthorised card transactions (none have succeeded so far, thank God!) and have had cards replaced by mail to my address, I have never had a virtual card as urgent replacement. Can you explain how exactly a virtual card looks and how it is used? What are the limitations compared to a physical card? Does it have a short life until one goes home and activates the new physcial card?

Or fumble with breasts, cock and balls, if you pick right person! ...followed by 15 minutes of fame the next day with headlines in the local tabloid: "Tourist had wallet, cellphone and gold chain worth 800,000 baht snatched while fumbling with an LGBTQ along Pattaya Beach Road in middle of night."

And therein lies another problem. The girls expect to be tipped! We're speaking of tourists from India... let's not forget.

Laudable aim... seamless connectivity. Dropping your passengers off on Sukhumvit Road is a long way from seamless!

I once saw myself on stage, and had to do a double-take. Turns out I was walking past a mirror. So, @Olddaddy were you walking past a mirror?

I am hardly an expert on Pattaya as I don't visit often enough. However, I've been going roughly once a year for the past 20 years at least, so I think I can say something about how the tourism scene has changed. Perhaps other members with more frequent visits, or who tend to stay for a month or more at a time can chip in. For sure, the urban area has grown. There was a time when Jomtien was little more than agricultral land. For sure, the roads are much more congested than in the decade 2000 - 2010 so that means more people. There are more tall condos, but not so many tall hotels. Shopping malls like Terminal 21 didn't appear until after 2010, I think. I wouldn't be so quick, therefore, to dismiss the assertion in the cited news article that there has been a relative decline of the sex scene as an attraction. That said, it is foolhardy to try to put a quantitative figure to it, like saying "2-3 percent of overseas visitors". As others have said, depending on the hour of day, visitors do various things. Looking at the crowds on Walking Street, I'd venture to say just about all visitors to Pattaya walk that street at some point, children included! What I want to unpack is how the article's assertion may be true, but still not a healthy trend. The news article spoke about overseas visitors. Actually, I think the biggest growth in visitors to Pattaya have been in domestic visitors. Many own apartments as second homes. Many drive from Bangkok to spend a weekend in Pattaya (thus the horrible traffic). Growth in overseas visitors, by my observation, has long been of the packaged-tour kind. There seems to be three big groups: Chinese, Indians and Russians. CHINESE 10 - 15 years ago, there was much discussion about huge tour buses carrying enormous numbers of Chinese tour groups. I have seen them myself, but in the last five years or so, I reckon they are less noticeable. This suggests that the Chinese packaged-tour numbers peaked sometime back and have not recovered. However, this is not to say that the Chinese are not coming to Thailand. They are, as I have seen again and again in my far more frequent visits to Bangkok. In the capital city, they are numerous. Increasingly, they are independent travellers, an evolution I expected from years ago given that China's GDP per capita is now US$12,000 (compared to Thailand's $7,000). When Chinese did not have much of a choice regarding their itinerary (because they were coming on packaged tours), they came to Pattaya. Their programme was probably packed with Tiffany Show, a boat tour, Nong Nooch and such standard fare. In a packaged tour, it would have been very hard to be a buyer of sex. So, to the extent that packaged-tour volumes increased dramatically, then the sex trade must have declined as a relative attraction. What I'm not so sure about is whether independent Chinese tourists are making their way to Pattaya. Or are they most sticking to Bangkok and Chiangmai? I somethow think they are giving Pattaya a miss (but others watching the Pattaya scene more closely may advise here). INDIANS My observation of the more recent explosion of Indian tourist traffic is that it is very gendered. Males outnumber females maybe 10 to 1. Yes, there are some packaged tour groups, but I think most come on corporate incentive tours (thus predominantly male). This explains the relatively sudden appearance of many Indian music bars on Walking Street, and ethnic Indian barkers. VIsitors from India (predominantly male) will be interested in the sex trade, but for practical reasons such as being in the company of friends and colleagues, they might go no further than to gawk at the grils and tease each other. Mostof them probably cannot afford to actually hire a girl - too costly for Indian dispoable income - and anyway most cannot afford to be seen to be hiring a girl and bringing her back to the same hotel where 50 of your friends and workmates are staying. Someone might tell your wife! So, if I am right, that however interested the (often male) Indian visitor may be in girls, he can't act on his impulses. This may be another excuse for those promoting Pattaya as a family friendly destination to brag about how uninterested in sex current visitors to the city are. In case you're wondering about GDP per capita, India = $ 2,500. That is to say, Thais are more than twice as rich as Indians. I read somewhere that academics of tourism generally see a GDP per capita of $10,000 as a threshold beyond which independent travel takes off. And as we know, independent travellers spend much more than packaged tourists. China has crossed the threshold. Thailand is getting close, but India is still far behind. This explains why company-paid tours (i.e. not even self-paid packaged tours, let alone independent travel) make up the majority of visits from Indians. RUSSIANS Certainly Russians come in droves, but I don't think they come in packaged tours (Moses may know better), though there is a fine line between chartered flights (followed by free-and-easy days) and all-inclusive packaged tours. However, they do come in family groups, which therefore means that it is hard for any family member to be bar-fining girls from Walking Street, Soi Buakhao or wherever the bars are. THE BIG PICTURE So all in all, there is reason to the claim that the sex trade as a relative indulgence of overseas visitors has declined over the years, but look more closely and two caveats stand out: 1. If not for the sex trade, packaged tours and incentive tours might not even choose to include Pattaya as a destination. If there wasn't theTiffany Show or Walking Street, would the groups from China and India come? 2. The quality of visitors that Pattaya attracts should be worrying. They are the low spenders, either because they are on all-inclusive packaged tours, or they are from a country like India that is poorer than Thailand. And if the Chinese experience is anything to go by, as soon as a market gets rich enough to produce independent travellers, they skip Pattaya.

Forgive me if I have got it wrong because I only a quick read... You paid (albeit indirectly) for a nice hotel room with a great view, you paid (directly) for an upgrade, but you spent the night in Danshi Gakuen in a windowless room, on a thin mattress, and without an ensuite bathroom. If you had wanted to pee in the middle of the night, you'd have to wake up the boy and ask him to perform the ritual of intercomming with someone for permission to use the bathroom. Have I got it right? 🤔

Coup? There has not been a coup in Vietnam since 1963. Do you mean the coup in Thailand in 2014? But if so, why would a coup cause them to be sent home? Or do you mean the 2021 coup in Burma? Why would that send them home either?

Just watched it, and I'd say it was a pretty good documentary trying to get to grips with what is surely a complicated problem with many moving parts. What struck me was the rather shallow consumerism that has come to afflict younger Thai adults, perhaps fuelled by social media and its depictions of lifestyles. The other thing is how Thais have to pay premium prices for even basic things like transport and education, mostly because the State does not provide. Too many have to send their kids to private schools (public schools have a quality problem?); too many are buying cars - one man featured had both a bike and a car (couldn't he sell one?) - because public transport is so bad. Towards the end of the documentary more warning signals were sent. Job creation will become a tougher and tougher problem, especially when the Thai education system is not up to scratch. With a lower birth rate and possibly only one-child families becoming the norm in the future, young people today cannot hope to depend on their children for their old age like in generations past; if they don't start saving now, it will be an even bigger disaster in a generation's time.

Sounds like you're hoping for company. Some gay bars may have English speaking bar tenders but it would be rare to find an escort boy able to manage more than three words. Also, it would be more helpful to others who come after you to put all your Tokyo adventures in the Japan forum, not this Bangkok thread.

@Polish933 Frankly, I wouldn't risk it. I would get Euros instead. The exchange rate for Euros is not bad at all. See this page from SuperRich (https://www.superrichthailand.com/#!/en/exchange), which has branches in many touristy places, including one along the elevated walkway between Silom MRT and Saladaeng BTS stations. Unfortunately, that means you have to keep your USD to use for another trip e.g. to the USA, or try to change them back to zloty. But it's safer to have clean bills of a recent date than risk it. If you land in Thailand and find that it is very hard to get local currency, it will completely spoil your holiday, and you waste money that you're spending on flights and hotel anyway.

According to a north German acquaintance from decades ago, Swiss German is very tonal "almost like a church organ" he pronounced with magisterial gravity... but I have no first hand knowledge of that. Dear Swiss German members of this board - no offence intended. Some of the world's greatest languages like Chinese are tonal. In fact I learned from the Museum of Languages in Paris that some 60-70% of the world's languages are tonal. Atonal languages are the abnormal ones.🥰

I hope they know what their target market is.

+1

Might this be due to a different tone? If you're not coming from an environment with a tonal language, this will trip you up. That said, these personal tales from first timers to Bangkok are like a lovely breath of fresh air, especially when told with no self consciousness or embarrassment. It helps old-timers like me relive with joy the times when we were once newbies tripping over all sorts of things imaginable.

I am waiting for the part about celibacy 🤣

It seems to me that you need to give thought to possibly similar difficulties for your next leg (130 days in Danang). Do you have a Vietnam visa to cover this entire period? If not, can you be sure that whichever airline that's taking you to Danang will let you board? What will happen when you try to return from Danang to Thailand? Will whichever airline accept your driver's licence as proof of residency in Thailand?

To be fair, the problem was really created by Thailand, not the Philippines. If you have some kind of residency in Thailand, then Thailand should have issued you a document or card to prove it. Not too long ago, someone showed me a "Malaysia Second Home" card, so it seems to me that other countries may be doing this routinely. Thailand in its usual disjointed-policy way, seems to be creating all sorts of residency options, which besides being confusing and potentially vague, don't come with a card or formal documentation? Thailand may think it's OK so long as they have stored the information in their database - which @bkkmfj2648 does not fully trust, thus wanting physical stamps on his passport - but foreign countries and airlines cannot access the Thai databases to verify status. So I would say it's Thailand that created this problem for you, not the Philippines.

On their menu, I just spotted something I had not seen before. It is Kasai Massage, and their description is "a traditional Thai genital therapeutic treatment, is renowned for its focus on promoting sexual and reproductive health benefits. Rooted in ancient healing traditions, this modality aims to stimulate reproductive function and internal organs, addressing issues such as impotency, erection dysfunctions, frequent urination, premature ejaculation, and fertility concerns." (I don't think I have given much thought to fertility concerns.) Sceptics will probably say "Gah, it's just a fancy name for a handjob." However, the menu also says "only certain therapist" will do Kasai. In fact, I counted only 9 of the 28 boys pictured on their website (as of today) who had Kasai listed against their names. That's about one in three. This suggests that there is a set program/choreography to be followed. Optimists might wonder "Is this anything like an edging session?" 365theriver: https://river365th.wixsite.com/365river