radioman

"The decline in the number of men, mongers cannot be explained solely by the deterioration in the girls' service." Very true, but the internet in large measure maybe can, or at least in part. I have a friend, he's mid 70's, looks a bit younger but nonetheless he has some mobility issues, couple of other irritable medical conditions but still gets about okay. He visits Thailand typically 2 weeks every couple of months together with a few days in HCM and Manila. He never goes to bars or takes girls from any of the working areas. In large measure his action comes from regular women who just want to hook up and fuck for the most part. Yes they often are looking for some old guy to pay their way but he usually doesn't go beyond the research and FFF (First few fucks) stage This is done through online research, everything from facebook to fuckbook from tarts-web to tinder.He must be active on every "friendly" site in the region. This guy has typically 3-5 girls per visit, some get to repeat, others not. He has the money, always 5 star hotels, yet he pays essentially nothing for these women if we discount the dinners and the odd in-expensive gift here and there. I know from other guys he connects with that he is not alone. I've met some of these women and he will often send a picture or two. Some I wouldn't get near with yours but others could easily wipe the floor with anything in a top line go-go. Several fantastic wife material, those have been mostly Filipino and Vietnamese rather than Thai though. SO he does spend some time upfront identifying the women he wants to meet and some time chatting to them online, then he arranges "interviews" and very often it's off to the races in short order. I'm not sure this explains the current prices or the people in the bars but when a 70 y.o. guy, who by his own admission would say he's not exactly a whizz with gadgets or technology is making use of them to such advantage then think what the under 40's are doing!

We didn't get into his background but I guess it's possible. The other two spoke good English as well.

If you're 25 reasonable looking, speak Thai and are a generally fun person the girls will fall over themselves and it's not unknown for them to offer freebies if they think there might be more in it, and as a minimum they will discount heavily. Experiences to the contrary are less a fact of time than they are of the effects of time. Prices, for everything, have risen and maybe in the working girl sector more than most areas but a 25 y.o today is not necessarily paying that much more than a 25 y.o. was 10 years ago. In some ways the current 25 y.o. is better off, he has a much bigger pond to fish in. I'd say that goes for guys up until 30 something, then the prices start rising and possibly exponentially past 40's.

Just had a visit today from immigration police. Was all co-ordinated and in line with expectation. They called yesterday to arrange a convenient time. 2 men and 1 woman, all exceptionally polite and well mannered, of course. Also exceptional English, at least conversationally, almost no hint of the Thinglish that is so prevalent. One of the guys explained that he actually spoke several languages English, German, Russian and, I thought rather oddly, Afrikaans. Not that I could test him but his English was pretty much spot on.

On Thai TV they can blur out the cigarettes and guns so... On a different tack we can all imagine that it might be fun to be the dictator of a despotic nation for a day or so but then it would just get boring. Is the bigger picture with NK just a play toward a clean exit strategy with some personal guarantees?

Anything is on the table, you can have anything you want, no worries so long as all the contracts go to US companies.

The bag lady

That's 2 this week then. Kate Spade didn't get a mention earlier. They do seem like real suicides rather than the generic Thai type.

Ah, I see now where he comes from.

But RedBull was never (so far) as much fun as the your-bum-rang gang.

I do miss those clowns. Where are they now?

It's pretty much right there where Tanglin Rd runs into Orchard Rd.

Okay, so more info. It seems a reasonable idea. Possibly a good outlet for a youngster to get into. If he has talent and it develops this could turn out to be a worthwhile option. A friends son who is a graphic designer makes serious money, 6 figures plus and the first is not a 1. All for drawing nice pictures that turn into, video games. It's a hard slog, no free lunch, but if you have the talent thars money to be made. Getting on the right path could go in a lot of very productive directions and if the idea of YT is as a tool rather than some misguided idea that its a sensible career choice then great. Windows Movie Maker is free. Plenty of online options again and for other than the committed over the top video freak I cannot imagine Windows is going to be a problem.

It's a huge field these days, but like aspiring premier league footballers its a very small fraction who actually achieve. Still, that's what dreams are about. Software is all over the place, from free online offerings to multi mega buck professional grade. What's wrong with iMovie as a starter package, it comes free with a Mac, others, Avidemux, ZS4, Open Shot etc. Although I have posted a couple of Youtube videos to a personal channel I've never done more than use an iPhone and upload them direct, unedited. Whilst they are very niche I have about 3 subscribers and about 400 views. Over a couple of years. Tutorials on video editing are everywhere on the web so you can pretty quickly get up to at least a decent walking pace and then go from there. One thing I would encourage at every step, especially if there will be a lot of speech is script script script and edit edit edit. Some of the very worst tendencies that seem to affect a huge amount of YouTube output is the massive prevarication and the enormous amount of uhm-ing and ah-ing that goes on. Either that or its just mind numbingly boring to watch even if it's something you are interested in. Monetization is a lot harder than many think. As of now I think YouTube wants 1000 subscribers and at least 4000 hours per year of watch time to join the partner program.

These last few years I've flown pretty much exclusively on Qatar Airways, a mixture of contract mandates, employer choice and free miles. Naturally that kind of loyalty gets rewarded so I get their frequent flyer gold card, never fly enough for the platinum, that would take 2 flights a week for a year I reckon. Anyway I suspect most airlines have similarly beneficial loyalty programs. One of the benefits is unrestricted fast track at Swampy, in and out. Works for me. YMMV.

Play store is a rather bad choice of name some one might say, but App store was already taken. If it's Android and it's downloading it's Play store, end of.

If you have an Android phone go to the Play Store app and search LINE.

So would he make a good future President?

Many thanks for that. Yes, it seems it might be much as before. I've got a few options, hardware wise to try it on so I might give it another go. That "too much time" thing. I hadn't previously investigated the favourites thing, seems that might make it a little more lightweight and useable. I found that with all the Repo's and addons it can become quite cumbersome very quickly. I'm keen to see if I can find reliable TV streaming, particularly BBC, F1 and NBA. tvcatchup.com is good for UK tv channels but it is very UK centric and doesn't include their world news channel just the BBC news channel.

Yes, not exactly up-market, was never a classy sort of place as you might imagine catering for sailors. Been a while now for me. Barrio Barretto still the same? Like I said I feel much of the quality has moved online both in Thailand and PI.

Coss, I'm curious about your kodi experience. I have previously had it installed but discarded it in favour of Plex. I have a Plex server running on a 24/7 machine and both my LG TV and Apple TV have Plex player apps as well as my iPad so its a bit of a no-brainer, which is always helpful. Plex however is a more traditional media system that requires the content to be stored somewhere on the LAN, even if that is remote. It is not suited for streaming. Can you expand a little on what apps you are using with kodi and if you are streaming, or are you also downloading the content prior to watching? A part of my previous disappointment was the seemingly continuous need to update and maintain the thing as apps disappeared or broke, either that or content that they advertised simply didn't seem to exist in reality.

I've been looking forward to Westworld S2. Recently I've watched: Godless, a single season, 7 episodes so its easy to binge watch. Good tale about a town devastated by the loss of nearly all its men in a mining disaster. Jeff Daniels is great as the lead baddie and almost the only known face. Tits at times but it seems only as box ticking, it's better than that. Harlots, decidedly low brow English tale of 18th century London brothel madams fighting both against each other and for survival. One episode in and I'll see how the next couple go. Again, 1 series so far and just 8 episodes. Feature comments about Harris's list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%27s_List_of_Covent_Garden_Ladies or read a copy for yourself at: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj2x- OShI7bAhULwbwKHY2yB5MQFjACegQIARBS&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.exclassics.com%2Fharris%2FlistA5.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0a_wFUw1DX0Y04pN61Pg9R Clearly Trink nicked the idea a couple of hundred years later Not much in the way of tits so far though plenty of rutting! A different sort of tale in some ways, formulaic in others. A series that if the tale it tells is somewhat true at its core shows the ladies of BKK are not yet possessed of anything markedly new.

Yeah, that lack of planning does seem to pervade everything. I've noticed whenever we need to plan,pretty much anything that involves the future, there's a definite sense of anguish and discomfort. I suppose it's that Thai thing, the past is gone, the future is a secret, live only for now.

I wrote something in the Thai Baht thread but I see this one kicked into life. I think you nailed it quite well and some good info, thanks. I've spent some time in Manila but otherwise AC and Subic mostly plus some up country traveling. Having lived and worked in the Middle East the last few years Filipinas are literally everywhere. They rarely use public pick up places now and in some parts of ME its hard to find many such places anyway. The trend over the last few years has been to move online. From dating sites to Tinder and its like they are everywhere now and it gives an easy way to get some communication going before you meet up usually. Bars and the like seem a dying trend worldwide for that sort of action.