Tartegogo

Thanks for this, @caeron. I have booked the paragliding experience with the same organisation, for me and the husband, we will be in Rio in Nov. Hopefully it is not a rainy day. I have been very lucky with the weather this year, maybe I am going to run out of luck before I get to Brazil! I see they also have a diving day now, as another experience which they sell. My husband doesn’t like that, so I’ll probably go to that with a garoto.

Unfortunately the foreign exchange rate will entirely depend on your American bank (or Argentinian bank), not on the ATM. The withdrawal fee (like the 2 dollars fixed fee that some ATM will charge you just for withdrawing any amount) will exist or not, depending on the relationship between your bank and the ATM owner. For example in Brazil i withdraw for free in Bradesco since it has a relationship with Hsbc which is one of my banks. But if I go anywhere else than Bradesco, they charge me the withdrawal fee. Never been to Salvador, so not sure about the availability of specific ATMs, but google maps are very good at locating them. If you check with your bank in the US, whether they have any special agreement with any Brazilian banks, and then google map for that bank’s ATM, you may be able to figure out what to do. Buying currency at a “cambio” kiosk, either in the US, at the airport, or in a Brazilian city, you should expect to loose about 5% of your money (they use punitive exchange rates bc they have to pay a trustworthy human to handle the transaction, they have to securely store various amounts of banknotes from many countries etc,) Withdrawing from an ATM, you should expect to loose less than 1.5% of your money’s value, because everything is automated. No salaries to pay. And it is a single currency storage, which already exists because the ATM already exists to serve the locals. (if you have a withdrawal fee, always withdraw the maximum amount to lower the impact, a $2 fee on $40 withdrawal is 5 %, but $2 on $500 is only 0.4%). That is how it works for me, others might have had different experiences. Ps: Some US and UK banks have credit cards with no international payment fees too, these can be good value if you can get one, to pay your sauna entrances, restaurants and hotel bills.

Because it has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with them?

Hey, guess what, we have the ability to be worried about more than one thing! Just because this thread is not about Chechnya, doesn’t mean we agree with the Russian Government. You haven’t discussed the Indonesian earthquake in this thread, does that make you someone who approves of deadly earthquakes? Or someone who doesn’t care about them? Or someone who has the wrong priorities when you worry about global issues? Frankly, going on tangent like this is not going to make me feel guilty, sorry, it just won’t work.

Well, when we quote government statistics, rather than anecdotes, you are equally dismissive. If you find this boring, I don’t understand why you are still on this thread at all. As for your blog, I don’t read it often at all. But unlike you, I don’t go there and comment “yawn”. When I am not interested in a discussion I walk away, I don’t write “yawn” at the participants.

Agree. But @Latbear4blk is not a troll and I thought I should say something.

Sorry, but this is dismissive of other people’s experiences to the point of being borderline insulting. You could just have posted nothing instead, that would have far more acceptable. I guess that “yawn” should be our responses to each of your blogposts, now.

True. For example, I have loads of anecdotal evidence of Brazilian guys fucking in a great way, so I have a strong bias towards Brazilians being great at fucking.

No surprised either. They have vending machines on the street that are dispensing jewellery for up to $1000. They never get vandalised. Different cultures lead to different crime levels.

I don’t need to be careful in Japan. And so, sorry, I won’t be. I will be careless there. I will show in any street my stack of 10,000 bank notes yen, my iPhone X max, my jewellery etc etc. And I’ll be fine.

You last sentence reminded me of the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

This whole thread is useful to me, both the report on the event and how others’ looks or outfit influence the chance of getting mugged.

What I describe are social skills, nothing to do with computers. The same advice would apply if it was on the phone.

If the guy advertises publicly somewhere, like viva local, anything goes, except what he is not giving in his ad. For example if he doesn’t have a face pic, then it would be out of order to post a face pic of that guy. For grindr guys, I wouldn’t post anything that reveals his identity, but would be happy to describe the sex in detail, purely for entertainment, though, because I don’t expect anyone to find the same guy, grindr is not fixed, it shows people depending where you and they are, unlike an ad. For sauna guys, I feel the real identity of the guys is out of order, so no face pics unless you have explicitly asked permission. But their sauna name is not their real name, so I have no issue posting that and the details of the sessions. After all they are selling a service which is legal, and we should be able to know who is good in the cabin, and who isn’t. We can only do that if we ID them by their sauna name. And the only people who will be able to find them from these posts are people going to the sauna, which to me is just like talking to another patron at the sauna itself.

Isn’t it obvious? You talk to him for a while, find out where he is, convince him you are really going to his city, and you are a good guy with deep pockets, and promise him enough money to attract him to come a real-life meet.

you can't chose boys from a specific city, only the region of the world. You have to check the field called "location" but some boys just type "Heaven" in this field. So you need to have a conversation with the boy and figure out where he is, if he will tell you.

I give up. Not sure what happened to you MVan. You used to be able to hold a rational conversation. Now, now, @Latbear4blk, behave! looking for more trouble!

MVAN, please. I don't know why you are missing the point. It is one thing not to like a sauna, it is another predict its downfall. Your friend has done both. We have no issue with him not liking a place. We were just surprised he can predict the future. We have made no prediction about any sauna surviving or failing at any point, we have no information whatsoever. We don't know your friend, we don't know how good are his prediction skills. It is just that most humans are not very good at predicting the future, so we are entitled to be surprised, that is all. But if you know he is good, we believe you. I personally hope (but do not predict) that we get a well-run 3rd sauna in SP.

Sometimes MVAN I wonder if you read your own posts. No not because he does not like the sauna, of course not, that is a non-sequitur. Because he makes predictions like this:

207.65 million / 323.13 million = 64.26% Sorry I couldn't let that one pass.

You have missed my most important argument in favor of exchanging tips for safety: When hiring an escort in the US, the most important precaution that I take is that I read multiple reviews of the guy I am hiring. This is not available to me in South America, so discussing what alternative precautions I need to take, is highly relevant, because what @Latbear4blk finds reasonable may never come to mind to someone who has only lived a cosy life in suburbia. You know, the crime rate of your DC neighborhood, or of Rio, is completely unknown to some of us. I am from Europe where gangsters don't even have guns! I don't quite get why you don't like it when people are exchanging tips on this. Are you upset that most Americans have never visited Murderville in DC, so they don't have experience with their own country's crime? But why would they visit it? I am going to Rio because it has beautiful beaches and I get fucks for $25. I am not going to find either in DC, so I have no reason to go see the worst of it. I assume American suburbanites feel the same, and so have not spent 2 weeks in a hotel right in the center of DC's Murderville. They need tips.

@Latbear4blk, you forget that we have reviews for US guys, so in the US, the answer to the question "how do I safely meet an escort" is always "If you are worried, only meet a well-reviewed guy." But we don't have that for South America. If they exist, it is still too hard for me to read them. So, I guess the question should be posed as "How do I safely meet un-reviewed guys in any high crime city?" (Brazilian cities are quite high up in the crime stats, see here: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp, 6 Brazilian cities in the top 20, although Baltimore and Detroit are in there also.) And then people have some other questions that are specific to the country: what are the typical scams that are being performed in Brasil that are not common in the US? What is the ID card situation and can you rely on them? etc., etc.

Or a cupboard door in the hall that looks like a bedroom’s door.

Hmmm, they don’t wear name tags. Anyone has a picture they can post in the clubs?

It is here: https://goo.gl/maps/BdDtqMxh1et Corner of Frei Caneca and Peixoto Gomide.