If anyone wants to read a great book and get some insight into the colonial world (i lived in one as a boy for a couple of years so i have a tiny bit of experience) then read "The Glass Palace." On the morality of paying a thai girl for sex ... it's tricky ... what if no one would pay, then she starves? What if one paid over the odds and provided a longish term arrangement? What is good or bad in these circumstances - perhaps the US should just export all its jobs to Thailand instead? At least she stays with other Thais in her home land ... and doesn't go to a hell hole like dubai.
Prostitution is age old and very common in Thailand. Western clients are only a small percentage of the clients in Thailand, less than 10% I read somewhere. All those boys and girls who sell their bodies in the bigger thai cities don't do that because otherwise they would starve. They can all go back to their home villages and work on the fields and have the life like most of their friends back home. But what they often tell you: that's "mai sanuk" or in english "no fun". It would mean: no nice clothes, no mobile phones, no partying every evening. Sometimes it is beyond comprehesion: here in Chiangmai some boys live with 4 or 5 in a small room with only a matrass but they still prefer it to living with their family in the mountains and do the field work every day.
You get better weed in the states than in Thailand, but there are free mushrooms just about anywhere you go. They grow like there's no tomorrow here. There's good and bad about every country. Internet is good if you get a business line, otherwise the problem isn't the speed, it's the bandwidth. If you ask enough, they'll finally get you set up with a business line.
I have been lurking on this thread since its inception, As a very frequent visitor ( 3 to 4 months a year for 8 years ) to Pattaya, a few comments on what has been posted already #1 internet conections , It is never going to be as fast as US maybe 1300 kps with 320ms ping . that is with ADSL at hotel room 1000baht a month ,I have never tried the wi-fi . With tradestation expect some lag in times of heavy volume .IB seems to work better because of the snapshot quotes , but also I have had nights where it has slowed to a crawl and went off altogether , I have a friend who lives here and posts on elite, who lives in a private house . He has used combinations of every provider available within reasonable price and comparing speed tests it is about the same as I get at the hotel, except he has a backup line . You just need to put hard stops in the market and park bids and offers to get filled because of the lag . #2 Accomodation 500 sq ft room about $550 a month including water and electric and close to everything . You could rent a condo for the same or less , but the bulk of them are in Jomtein about 3 miles from the main night life but prob would not have ADSL , more and more hotels have it in house now . # 3 As for the comments about dentists , I had 17 teeth crowned about 5 years ago for $5k , so did a buddy . even worked on a Sunday when the stuff was late back from the dental lab and was leaving on the Monday. Bangkok Pattaya hospital is a smaller version of Bumrungrad in Bangkok . Go look them up on youtube, state of the art at a fraction of US prices ( check out their complete checkup packages with results on the same day) # 3 The nightlife I have to agree with retaildaytrader s reply to clubber lang and the getting older issue , I am 49 divorced with 2 grown up kids and live in Seattle if you want to go clubbing and try to pick up younger women women good luck .unless you are flashing a big wad of cash drive fancy car etc , either that or some 40 somthing divorcee with tons of emotional baggage and is looking for a sponsor . I dont go to the gogo bars as often as I used to . There are plenty of younger hotties in them , but they are way more money driven, just trying to maximise their earnings potential before their looks fade , Beach road is the other end of the spectrum .lot of ones well past their sell by date . But up on Soi 7 and 8 . there are about 100 beer bars with plenty of good looking women in them . # 4 with regards to the social issues , not all of these girls are illiterate farmers . I have had ones who knew their way around an excell prgram , a lens inspector at Thai N**** factory , QC at big Japanese paint factory , all walks of life . 90 % of them are here of their own free will because they can make a lot more money and have their own hours than stuck in a dreary factory job . added to that if they can hit the jackpot and eventually land a farang husband ,they may as well get paid whilst doing it . Once you having been coming here for a while you build up a whole revolving list of numbers ,you can call of previous ones Prostitution in Thailand is , and always has been a grey clouded issue , After you stop getting wound up in all the Christian morality issiues and just regard it as renting a girlfriend for the night and probably one you have known before ,you are over the hump so to speak as retaildaytrader said the money changes hands either way it just here you get a gaurentee LOL , .The biggest problem for a trader here is having the self disipline to stay at the keybord till 4 AM knowing that all the fun is 10 min walk away or you have 6 text messages from girls trying to get a hold of you PS RETAILDAYTRADER check your PMs if you wanna hook up
Any chance BarryL can learn how to use paragraphs instead of posting a huge unreadable blob of prose?
you are envious that u have not lead barry's life. the prose is definitely comprehensible plus informative which is not the case with most postings. barry- thanks for a gem post.
do they still have the ferrari club? or whatever it was called, the club with that ferrari in front! when i lived in Thailand (10 years ago), the computer connection wasn't that good....is it more reliable now?
i agree , Barry's post was very inf. tks - don't mind the effort to read, thus since retail didnt answer this Q, i wud like to pose it to Rimping & Barry & others perhaps surely logic says tht if u live n work in TH , the govt will claim ITax on inc. derived while resident in TH , also maybe? a wealth tax on ur global holding s/income? etc [eg USA, India] what are these rates / rules like? i live in SG now, seems like not much diff pricewise -
There are no official numbers, but estimates for the number of HIV infected prostitutes in Pattaya vary between 5 and 25%. It's a tremendous problem in Pattaya. Assuming you're not being extremely stupid and you're always wearing a condom, there's still a possibility it will break. You will have to wait 3 months after a possible infection before you can do a HIV test. Regardless of how the test will come back, those will be the 3 longest months of your life and the day the doctor reads your verdict, the longest day ever. Enjoy.