Trenton42

Who is that LB at Baby Boom with the long dick who used to work at Famous?

She was a decent shooter, although she said she hadn't cum for 5 days.

The free Wi-Fi at Miami Ago-go isn't bad, but it's hard to get the girls to leave me alone so I can do some stuff.

I've been happy with the Wi-Fi at Dynasty Inn. Only problem is if extending one's stay, it's a bit of a hassle to get a new password.

Eastiny Plaza has in-room Ethernet. I travel with a pocket router and had great throughput.

Yup.

And there are plenty of ATMs in Pattaya.

But the bank officer will try to push the high fee debit card on you that has features you don't need and not even present the Cheap Charlie ATM card as an alternative so she can hit her quota. The card fee should only be 100-200 baht.

If you're a Yank and you want to have in the vicinity of 10K USD in your accout it is best to have less than 10K as with 10K or more total in all foreign accounts you're required to file a Treasury form.

There are some advantages for Americans and Brits to have a Bangkok Bank account if wiring money in as instead of a Swift Transfer you can do an ACH transaction to Bangkok Bank New York and Brits have a similar scheme with the london branch.. The fee is $10 plus 500 baht for most accounts. But for me it'snot the lower fee but it is connected to an American account and with one click I can wire money in.

Not sure how I would initiate a Swift Transfer from the States with me being in the LOS as often banks want signed forms.

If you establish Standing Wire Orders at your bank or brokerage, you can invoke a wire by telephone. And SWOs are considerably less expensive than a standard wire. With Schwab one must talk with a representative, but Wells Fargo is all automated attendant.

An important benefit to Bangkok Bank for Americans is that Bangkok Bank is the only Thai Bank that the US government will send direct deposits to.

Probably saves him a fortune on ladydrinks.

Haven't seen one yet that could pass.

Check with your bank as you may be able to set up a Standing Wire Order, which greatly reduces the cost of a transfer.

IIRC, Wells Fargo charges $50 for an international wire, but only $14.95 for a SWO.

1 international wire per quarter is free at Schwab with qualifying balance.

hmm that could make visits to Darkside bar a little more interesting....

It's a big reason I've reduced my visits. Lots of fun at CIB so why put up with the hassle.

There's the thing. There are PLENTY of new faces in Patong and yes it's good to see some of the old faces too. All in a relatively compact and hassle free space. There is a lot to like. You don't REALLY swim in the Pattaya sewer do you?

You're kidding yourself if you think the beach water is any cleaner in Patong. They run untreated sewage out to the beach just like Pattaya.

For True Move users:

To top up balance to another number from phone.

*123*Top Up Card number 14 digits* other's mobile number 10 digits #

That's the friendly and firm Amy in La Bamba.

If I could teach her to say "Aye popi" I'd have to break one of my rules!

Yes, but I know where the secret exits are.

No, LeCat is correct; NEP is a death trap, and every one should stay away!

One of the best!

Naysayers have been prostilatising the end of nightlife in Thailand since Thaksin began his Social Order Campaign in 2001. But through early closings and crackdowns, Bird Flu and SARS, two coups and an airport occupation, the Red Shirts attempting to burn Bangkok to the ground and Yingluck attempting to wash it away with a flood, and on top of all that a tsunami, the LB mongers have never had more choice in venues or companions including Filipina LBs flocking to Thailand to ply their trade.

Thailand finished? Not by a long shot!

Drunken idiocy is also the reason a lot of clubs have insanely expensive drinks, because they don't want out of control drunks in there like that Russian goof punching cars. When I was in Veracruz, Mexico they had a plaza full of bars where other Mexican tourists went to get drunk. Security was everywhere and they held batons and riot shields so if you got stupid they took care of you really fast. No surprise there were no fights, even when the Mexican navy was in town and piled into the bars to get ridiculous drunk because you were constantly reminded to behave by the 30 or so riot cops standing around the center of the plaza.

 

Maybe Indonesia LB scene is best, no booze, tons of hot girls, still cheap.

 

As for Thailand stickman bangkok has been writing he's hearing rumors of NEP turning into an all ladyboy place, as those are the only bars making money there. Just because you see no customers inside doesn't mean like 100 girls aren't being phoned out that day or still on barfine.

Which clubs have insanely expensive drinks?

Since when did the Indonesian bars get rid of booze?

Given the number of LBs parading around NEP, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Plaza was turning to the Dark Side. But Stickman knows it's simply not true that only the LB bars are making money there. Angelwitch 1, Spanky's, Billboard, and the Rainbow bars continue to pack them in. And some of the smaller bars (such as Pretty Lady and DC-10) aren't necessarily packed, but have a high turnover and are certainly making money.

Nor is is true that owning a LB bar is a license to print money. Obsession is always packed with Japanese, but I can't recall the last time I've seen more than 3 customers in Temptations or Casanova, and I go there often.

Do you have any details on the mechanics of this SoiBoy?

For True, one must go to one of their shops where bills can be payed. I suspect it's the same for other carriers.

Lita Bar

Let's hope so, or they'll get a cat!

It's a beer bar. BFs *should* be less expensive there.

What part of Pattaya *isn't* infested with rats?

Looks like it made the big time.

From Time:

The Land of Smiles? How about the Land of Shakedowns?

Mastercard’s 2014Global Destination Cities Index recently ranked Bangkok as the second most visited destination in the world after London. Spend a few days this hedonistic metropolis and you’ll soon understand why, for it offers an almost unbeatable mix of culture, edgy nightlife, cheap shopping, comfortable hotels, warm weather and — who can say no? — Thai cuisine.

 

But since the May 22 coup d’état that saw the ouster of a democratically elected government and martial law declared across the country, many tourists and expatriates in Bangkok have fallen prey to a criminal practice. The victims have little recourse when reporting incidents to the police, because the perpetrators are police officers.

 

“If you go to Sukhumvit Road, you can see the police looking for tourists who are smoking or drop a cigarette butt, then they ask them for their passport and make them pay 2,000 baht [just over $60]. I see this happening all the time,” says anticorruption politician Chuwit Kamolvisit.

 

“[And] when the tourists come out of Soi Cowboy [a notorious red-light area], the police ask them if they’ve had drugs and then make them do a pee test on the side of the road. If they don’t want to do the pee test, they have to pay 20,000 baht [about $610].”

 

Being a former brothel owner, Chuwit’s word isn’t exactly gospel in Thailand. But his claims are apparently corroborated by dozens if not hundreds of first-person reports in the form of local newspaper articles, complaints to embassies, blogs and social-media postings. Some believe that the coup, by disrupting traditional avenues for corruption, has forced aberrant police officers to look for new targets.

 

On Dec. 10, British Ambassador Mark Kent tweeted, “Met Tourism Minister this morning. Covered range of issues, including reports of stop and search in Bangkok.”

 

The Twitter feed of Joe Cummings, the formerLonely Planet author who practically ​put Thailand on the backpacker map, is riddled with stories detailing police harassment and extortion. “Random police searches of foreigners in BKK is getting bad,” reads a typical entry dated Dec. 6. “Many reports of innocent tourists forced to pay bribes.”

 

Then there’s this scathing letter to the editor by tourist Reese Walker published Nov. 29 in the Bangkok Post: “Stopped, frisked and searched. When we asked what reason was for the search, police simply laughed at us. The police even asked my fiance to perform a urine test on the side of the road … [We] won’t be recommending other people to visit Thailand based on two frightening incidents of what we believe to be racial profiling.”

 

Walker’s letter gives me a real sense of déjà vubecause when I was assignment in Bangkok last month, I too became the victim of a police shakedown.

It was Christmas Eve and I was at the upstairs area of a terrace bar in the Silom Road area having a late-night drink. At around 2 a.m. I called it a night and descended to the ground floor. There I saw half a dozen police officers searching the premises and interrogating the bartender, who was handcuffed on a chair. An officer detained me straight away. “What’s going on?” I asked, identifying myself as a journalist.

 

He made a menacing fist at me, which convinced me to pipe down.

About 15 minutes later, another police officer produced a bag of white powder, shook it near my face and accused me of buying it. I emphatically denied the claim. Meanwhile, other police officers began helping themselves to drinks from the bar. When the bartender protested, they kicked him in the shins.

 

Eventually, a police officer took me outside where a Thai woman told me if I paid the equivalent of $15,200, I would be released. I told her I hadn’t done anything and would not pay a cent. I was taken back inside, where officers had now detained another four Westerners present at the bar. They then took all five of us in taxis to a nearby police station without a word of explanation.

 

Over the next four hours we were individually forced to undergo urine tests for drugs, during which a policeman standing guard in the lavatory taunted me by saying, “You cocaine.” Images from popular books and a TV series on the notorious Bangkwang Central Prison penitentiary, the so-called Bangkok Hilton, flashed through my mind.

 

Next we were taken to a media room with powerful fluorescent lights. Exhausted and disheveled, having not slept the entire night, and with our urine samples lined in front of us, we were photographed in a setting that made us look guilty as sin.

 

Some time after dawn we were presented with a typed document — in Thai — and told to sign it. At this, I drew a line and demanded to speak with the Australian embassy. Only then did our tormentors back down, casually informing us we’d all passed our drug tests and would be released — if only we signed on the dotted line. I did so, but I also scribbled, “This is not my signature” on the document before walking back onto the steamy streets of Bangkok at 8 a.m. on Christmas Day, traumatized but elated to be free.

 

During my detention, I identified myself as a journalist many times and asked for an explanation. None was given to me. After my release, I wrote to the official email address of the Thai police, but it bounced back. I copied half a dozen other government agencies, including the Australian embassy in Bangkok, which is supposed to have a police-liaison unit, but the only reply I got was from the Tourism Authority of Thailand, which said the following:

 

“The Royal Thai Government and the Royal Thai Police have no such policy to detain, harass, abduct, threaten and drug test Western tourists in Thailand. On the contrary, the Royal Thai Government recognizes the huge importance of tourism and safety for all foreign tourists is an on-going priority for the country.”

 

One would think that would be the case. Tourism receipts and indirect tourism activity account for 15% of Thailand’s GDP — making it the largest sector in the economy. So why would police be allowed to make omelets from Thailand’s golden eggs?

 

The most popular theory is that low-ranking street cops, some of whom earn as little as $1 an hour, are seeking out new sources of income, because the military-led government has begun cracking down on the street vendors who were the former targets of police shakedowns. Foreigners make convenient prey because they can be intimidated and, compared with the local population, are relatively wealthy.

 

“This explanation says the takeover has placed the police, traditionally at odds with the military, in some sort of frenzy amidst proposed restructuring that is likely to deeply disrupt the way the police have operated — both formally and informally,” says Thai political analyst Saksith Saiyasombut.

 

But Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a Thai political scholar based in Japan who has had his passport revoked for criticizing the military-led government, thinks the practice has, paradoxically, a social-order element to it. Demanding random drug tests from some tourists, or asking for cash for a dropped cigarette butt, the thinking goes, shows other tourists that Thailand’s new rulers want to shed some of the seedier aspects of the country’s image abroad.

 

“The coup makers came with a mission. And that mission is to rebuild an orderly and clean society,” Pavin says. “They believe that by appearing to be serious about cleaning up society and creating an orderly atmosphere, it will attract more tourists. They even bizarrely announced a new campaign, Tourism and Martial Law, to promote the idea that society under martial law is pleasant.”

He adds: “It will not work, because they don’t understand either the logic of tourists or indeed the economy of tourism.”

 

Bangkok may have had 16.42 million visitors last year. But that number is down nearly 2 million compared with the previous year, with the drop attributed to the declining ruble and corresponding fall in the number of Russian tourists.

 

Increased fear of flying in the wake of the Malaysia Airlines tragedies has been proffered as another reason, as has general uncertainty about the coup. If action isn’t taken to rein in the Thai police, tourist numbers may fall further still.

 

FFS... Isn't 69 a beer bar?

Get an entry level smart phone and make it your dedicated Thai phone. They're $100 - $130 and will enable you to have Line, TF, Badoo, email and a basic camera on you at all times. Tools of the trade my friend. You won't regret it.

A really good idea!

Also a good idea to get one that has GPS. Can't tell you how many times I left some girl's apartment at 4AM and couldn't remember how to get back to my hotel.

It also helps to find a girl's place when they send their location.

Entry level Androids are cheap.

The duck costs extra.

Call center girls in Thailand with a degree earn 15,000 THB to start. Not much of a career path, and no bargaining power as new girls are graduating every year. Girls without a degree make considerably less.