hank75

Perhaps we are now being monitored by a communist spy network

All very valid but no point overthinking at this stage. Having holidays with your family sounds good and sensible, as it would be a pity to drift from them despite new life and new love. It could be that you enjoy farang-friendly Siem Reap and don’t mind spending time there solo continuing your Khmer language studies, with Cam coming over for weekends. You were independent before Cam and can continue to be even while being ensconced in a relationship with him. Spending some time getting to know Cambodia on your own and forming your own circle of expat or retiree friends would help greatly in settling there long term, this could be the perfect opportunity.

Check @jamiebee’s ongoing travel report

Boy drink is usually 300-400 baht so 100 baht commission sounds about right.

Thank you for your service to the forum in reviewing a very lacklustre sounding Big Boys @jamiebee

Now that you mention it, he is certainly @vinapu’s type!

On rare occasions I’ve seen customers more attractive than the boys on stage Another time I went to Moonlight with my Asian male friend who was mid 40s but in the dark bar, could pass for 10-15 years younger and has a number of bar boy accessories (muscles, tattoos). As he was walking to the men’s room he was solicited by a customer who mistook him for a Moonlight hunk.

I think someone mentioned to me that they are no longer land mine victims just normal amputees (farming or cat accident) but carrying on the “advertising”. Regardless they still need donations from good hearted tourists such as yourself

Agree but it was the Wild West then. Worse than rocks, little naked children could also be picked off the ground by pedophiles as quite often you saw them sitting by the roadside completely alone. Edit: this was slightly before that disgusting pervert Gary Glitter was caught and deported. He then went on to settle in Vietnam.

For sure this is a must do. But I will never visit Tuol Sleng or the Killing Fields again. The memory from decades ago is still fresh, as is the recollection of seeing land mine amputees or those blinded begging outside Angkor Wat. You no longer see them, they are dead or too old to beg and have been tidied away for more pleasant tourism. My regular Cambodian guy is again too young to remember them, despite having grown up just outside Siem Reap, nor has he ever visited Tuol Sleng although living in Phnom Penh. On a more cheerful note this was also a time you could pick up bits of the Angkor temples lying on the ground and bring back a nice carving in your pocket. Very illegal of course and not enforced in the slightest.

I had a few of those conversations with my Cambodian regular. What blew my mind a little bit was that I still remember Cambodia from the pre-Chinese days, while he being significantly younger does not. By the time he was a teen, Chinese presence (and the notion of anything associated with Chinese businesses and language as positive, lucrative, etc) was dominant everywhere, the casinos were mushrooming up, alongside restaurants, karaokes and so on. When he first went to work in bars, it was the Chinese customers who were high rollers. When I reminisce about visiting Siem Reap and Phnom Penh when there was barely any Chinese influence (mostly French) and how much more authentic it felt back then, he just looks at me blankly. It feels very odd to have memories of a country that a local does not share. Also the uneasy relationship between Thailand and Cambodia is another sore spot. If Cam is like the other Cambodian boys I know, don’t get him started on whether muay thai is actually Thai or Cambodian. I was thoroughly lectured on the history of “kun Khmer” illustrated by multiple YouTube examples of a Cambodian fighter pounding a Thai fighter into the dust. Enjoy Chiang Mai!

Fantastic report. Such detail and even with photographs. Despite being a decade old and unable to be enlarged (at least on my phone), they greatly enhanced the report. I skimmed to the Kanchanaburi chapter as that was of most interest to me, but will return and read the rest soon. Very coincidentally I was researching a trip to see the Mon bridge and village in Sangkhlaburi just this past week. It seems many people only go as far as the national park and River Kwai and stop there (perhaps due to the driving time from Bangkok). One of my regular guys recently did the land crossing to Myanmar so I rang him to ask if he remembered the impressive scenery and by any chance passed by the Mon community. “I don’t know I was sleeping” was his unimpressed answer. After a verbal tussle trying to explain to him what I meant, he conceded that he did pass by “three Wats” which is of course the Three Pagoda Pass. As you’ve mentioned in your report, the romance and dramatic history of the region may be completely lost on Thais and Burmese both, as they now prosaically think of it as just the administrative border between the two countries, slightly tedious to get to, but a necessary evil. I also asked if he was interested to join me in a visit to Sangklaburi and he said he would, but added he thought it was a long way to go just to see the same folks he could see at home! Edit: @bkkmfj2648 I read on to the conclusion of Pattaya. Did you ever get that Bangkok job?

Good to hear you are back in Thailand, I always enjoy your trip reports @jamiebee I haven’t had the opportunity to visit Kanchanaburi yet, it felt just a little bit too far for a day trip so I’ve always vaguely planned to go when I had time to stay overnight in one of those floating river lodges. Interested to read your comments after you’ve been. Out of curiosity why not our forum’s old faithful, Pattaya combined with an island hop? Or did you do that last time? I seem to recall a report by you about sightseeing in Pattaya perhaps I’m mistaken I was worried there for a minute 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Perhaps this was why the bar had no customers. A savvy owner would have the boys immediately accompany the customers as soon as they stepped into the bar. Not drag on drinking games for another 30 minutes, while customers potentially could have walked out.

For this reason too I have never offed a Vietnamese though I’ve taken a couple drinking before. Reports from here but also from friends. I do miss the gang of Vietnamese boys at Jupiter who were cute as buttons and very entertaining. Seems there are none left there. Which other bars now have a higher proportion of Vietnamese apart from Goodboys?

Well it’s nice to see OldDaddy championing social justice for a change, instead of minimum wage for barboys Am curious. How does immigration to the UK support you though? Yesterday I watched a short documentary on CECOT, the maximum security prison in El Salvador which was constructed to obliterate gang crime. It currently holds around 20,000 prisoners and is built to hold 40,000 or 1 out of 158 from the whole population. Imagine building a prison expecting to imprison 1 out of every 150 people in your country. I was beyond shocked. It looks like something from a dystopian novel and in conditions no human should have to endure, especially the isolation cell. Many are in there for life. Yet not only is this place real, Trump in his anti-immigration push, rounded up over 270 Venezuelans - many of whom were falsely accused of being gang members and criminals simply because they had tattoos - and mass deported them to El Salvador where they were subjected to unspeakable deprivation before finally being freed by their own government in a prisoner exchange. Footage of their deportation and brutal arrival in El Salvador can be found on X via the main Wikipedia for CECOT. The El Salvador president Bukele claims that by imprisoning thousands, they have liberated millions. Richard Madeley, the British documentary host, concluded that while initially he was appalled visiting CECOT, he had to eventually concede that Bukele’s words had some truth to them and there are so many shades of grey. No verdict on whether Trump too was vindicated in rounding up completely innocent migrants, flinging them on a plane and then into hell. For those of you with a few spare minutes, look up Richard Madeley’s visit to CECOT as well as the arrival of the Venezuelan deportees.

I tried to do that too since I didn’t want to accumulate a stack of riels that would be useless to me anywhere else. But as Jimmie and Cam are there for the long term, it might be a good idea to not incur international fees each time you do a supermarket run? Other members may disagree but I use my credit card as much as possible in Bangkok too since I dislike collecting small bills and coins. My (probably incorrect) logic is because I misplace them or get fed up of the weight of the coins and hurl all small change into the nearest donation tin, I am losing money either way.

This is the part that stings

Happy to be corrected. It felt to me like Circus (and also Pride) never quite clicked with the audience. They had the formula of what should be a successful bar: prime location, unique concepts, catchy on-trend names and logos, entertainers, food alongside drinks. Yet somehow they didn’t become establishments in the soi. I personally never went inside Circus, all the red gave me a headache. I went to Pride once because I heard they hired one of Jupiter’s best singers (a power move). However it felt cold, sterile and when I went, mostly empty. My understanding is the owner is a very smart guy with multiple businesses. Perhaps he outsmarted himself with Circus and Pride which over delivered on what the Soi 4 crowd actually wanted.

If I were you, I would go back to the bar, be very polite but firm and let the mamasan know he stole money. No need to provide evidence, or get into a you said vs he said. Just state the fact clearly and leave. If comes down to how professional the bar and mamasan are (not very, for smaller bars I think) but once the boy is known to be sticky fingered, they will be more vigilant with him. Bigger bars would usually dismiss the boy but apparently times are lean in Silom these days. Sometimes the victim thinks the burden of proof is on them (it is not) or you may think because you kept him for services instead of calling him out that gives him a pass (it does not). If you do speak to the bar you just need to say he took 1000 baht from your bag while you showered, played with his phone in bed, but insisted on full price. Double strike. I’m sorry you had this experience and glad that next off sounds much better.

For some reason the sound on this X link doesn’t work but when you watch the other video clips circulating online with sound, it’s clear that it was a pretty scary incident for the driver. The two guys were very aggressive, banging, swearing and trying to open his (fortunately locked) car door more than once. They were drunk despite being broad daylight. When questioned by the police they claimed they were provoked and that the driver had shouted at them in Burmese but from phone footage they filmed of the driver, it’s clear he was a white farang. They were identified as working at a bar in “South Pattaya” which could very well be Boyztown. You can see that one of them has stupidly forgotten to remove his number tag “118”. I don’t know if they are familiar to any members but it would be wise to avoid! Edit: sound in embedded link works now. Driver sounds Russian and suprisingly calm

From a Crime Asia Facebook group, no article link Pair of young male prostitutes apologise over road rage clash with foreigner🚨 A video clip circulating on social media showed two bar hosts chasing a foreign tourist on a motorcycle, hurling insults, and smashing his car in Pattaya, Thailand. The altercation reportedly began when the tourist braked suddenly after being followed by the motorcycle, whilst the two men claimed they were provoked by the driver honking and shouting verbal abuse at them. Fearing for his safety, the alleged victim recorded the 1 minute and 28 seconds long incident on June 1 as evidence instead of retaliating, later expressing frustration that reporting the matter to authorities would be pointless. The two men, identified as Mr Techit Saenkoung, 25, and Mr Amolnat Phanomroengsak, 28, later admitted to reporters that they pursued the vehicle whilst slightly intoxicated after a momentary lapse of judgment. Although the men claimed they initially followed the driver to a police station before leaving due to exhaustion, they apologised to residents for damaging the image of the tourist city and agreed to clarify the facts with the police. #CrimeAsia #RoadRage #Pattaya #Thailand #Tourism 🏍️

I’m interested to know if they were actually bisexual and indulging for their own pleasure, or MBs - but it also sounds as though they were employed in Pattaya and sufficiently funded to bring wives and families?

He works when he needs money as he’s based in Pattaya now. Does the top hat nude number and his hula hoop number, which is still as good as before.

Thank you, I found the place I visited which is further down the same road https://maps.app.goo.gl/QU6qCicnhTsFmqxv8?g_st=ic