palmbeachblueeyes

To whom is a 34.5 baht alarming? That was the government's target a number of months ago when they were urging the central bank to lower the interest rate. It is well below the 36 that the baht was a little over a year ago. What should the baht be trading at? I don't know but I urge the bank to try and stabilize it if that is possible. I suspect it is not. Trump/Musk have thrown the world economy into chaos. If the bank raises interest rates to fight inflation and to stabilize a troubled baht they are likely to increase the economic hardship that the threatening economic downturn will cause and the political instability that is likely to cause. The government is already weakened because growth is less than people want. A world wide recession and the instability that Trump is causing will hurt Thailand's tourism business. The loss of exports to the US will hurt all sorts of sectors of the economy especially rice sales. A weaker baht will encourage both of those sectors but not as much as they are likely to lose. While all this is going on the US Fed will have to keep rates steady or higher to fight inflation putting more pressure on the baht. I think it would not be difficult to see the baht trading for 40 in the near future. That would help the tourism, rice, and construction businesses a little.

I am certainly glad he was caught in Thailand. I hope Justice is swift. But there are two things that bother me about this story. The first is where did the money go? He has been operating the site for multiple years and has 10,000 subscribers so to only have 3.5 million baht is chump change. The second thing that bothers me is the Thai authorities handing over the list of subscribers to different worldwide Police Services. I hope they get guarantees that the press releases announcing arrests from these names should always feature the Thai police and make plain that Thailand is not a place for this sort of illegal activity. We farang who are here on retirement visas are here here enjoying the Thai hospitality and trying to obey the laws and customs. We don't want our reputation spoiled by this any more than do the Thai people. There have been several stories involving Thai police and pedophiles in the last few weeks. I hope this represents a serious, ongoing crackdown on this sort of despicable behavior. A lot of people make bad comments about the Thai police but I hope they will notice that the Thai police have cracked down on the scammers operating in Cambodia and Myanmar and now seem to be taking aggressive actions on pedophile rings. I am proud of them.

Someone in this thread mentioned ordinary tourists coming to Pattaya, looking for temples culture etc. I would say those people are lost and they probably could benefit from Google maps. The reason that Thailand is such a wonderful place is that it was never colonized by Christians. Judge not that you be not judged never figured very prominently in their actual day-to-day religion. I think the definition of sexpat is a man who lives in a foreign country. Every man I have ever known has an interest in sex. Even if because of age or medicines or operations or whatever he can't participate, he still wants to hear about it. The Thai people though very conservative in some ways are very liberal in others and there is a realism that having a relationship of any sort for however long with a farang is highly likely to increase their standard of living. As an American, I have learned a great deal from the Thai people and have much much more to learn. I like most Americans am loud, obnoxious and impatient. Luckily the Thai people are the opposite of those. I have only been coming here for 20 years so I don't know what it was like before And I have been lucky enough to have never met anyone here complaining about other foreigners having sex. But in weird cultures around the world like American evangelist there is a desire to label everyone else as a pervert, probably because their ministers never engage in sex. And if you're stupid enough to believe that, then please send me some money because God wants me to have a private jet. When I was growing up there was an expression which was live and let live. If someone wants to label me a sexpat let them go ahead and do that. .

If you're serious about this then I have to wonder why you picked this site post this request. I have no idea on this site how to send you a personal note and it shows your email it's been removed. I would suggest you try posting it on the site like silverdaddies. I think most gay men are looking for a lifetime friendship. Even if the relationship started off sexual they don't tend to continue in that way. We don't tend to have family who can help us through the experiences we are all likely to have. And we have bucket lists of places we would like to go and things we would like to do where it would be nice to have someone to share those with whether they make the trip or the adventure just someone to talk to. Charlie