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Bangkok Red Light District

Bangkok Red Light District

I lived in Thailand for thirteen years, and visited Bangkok scores of times because my wife has family there and most visa work is carried out there too, but I'm not completely sure that there is a designated Bangkok Red Light District as such.

Bangkok is the Bangkok Red Light District to put it simply. There are sex bars and non-sex bars all over the city, and then there are the hybrids - ie, those which are respectable by day, but turn into sex bars after dark. Many of these places have a microphone on a stand in a corner, so that they can play Karaoke songs later on. Many of the girls who come to sing will be on stage to draw attention to themselves, but they are not hoping to be spotted for a career in music.

If there is such a thing as a dedicated Bangkok Red Light District, I suppose that it is around Sukhumvit Soi 4, which is more popularly known as Soi Nana, after the first and largest hotel in the street. However, many of the most popular sex venues are around, not necessarily in that street

I know that many tourists to Bangkok head for the famous sex bars and night clubs in Soi Nana, but if you are staying in Bangkok for more than one night, check out the bars around your hotel first, you will find some pleasant surprises that are not overfull and not overpriced. Thais, other Asians and falang residents use these places, so they are more typical of Bangkok than what you probably think of as the Bangkok Red Light District.

One thing to remember when looking for typical examples of the Bangkok Red Light District, is that it is not like what you have seen on the films of American soldiers in Saigon, Tokyo, or even Bangkok. In general, the signs are not so flashy, and the girls promoting the bar on the street will be more modestly dressed, although schoolgirl uniform is popular.

If the Bangkok Red Light District is on your list of sights to see, don't be worried about checking it out, you are not obliged to do anything you don't want to, and you will probably have a lot of fun.

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All the best,

Owen.

Podcast: Bangkok Red Light District

Growing Old Abroad

Growing Old Abroad

Old age creeps up on us, as does getting older in general. Parents regularly wonder what happened to their youth, and older people wonder why they hadn't noticed it happening to them. These are common experiences, but when you have been growing old abroad, there are other factors.

Those who are growing old abroad probably only have elderly friends. More than likely, they don't have younger family members around them as they would, if they had stayed at home (in Britain, for example).

That can make growing old abroad pretty difficult for an ex-pat, much more so than if they had stayed at home near their family.

This is quite obvious, but it still surprises most elderly people because they didn't see it coming. It seems as if one day, they were frolicking on the beach, or at least going out for walks every day, and the next they were house-bound or in a wheelchair and lonely.

However, it is a very depressing experience that a lot of ex-pats growing old abroad will have to come to grips with one day.

Sex Matters

It is easier for a man in some ways. He can go to the pub, but many women will not do that alone. They tend to live longer than men too, giving them longer to have to cope with ever-deepening depression.

This now very common phenomenon of ex-pats growing old abroad is one of the reasons why Neem Jones established Fuengirola Home Help Services. It is meant to provide home help and companionship to those who need it - the elderly, the infirm, the house-bound and busy parents.

If you would like to discuss your requirements completely confidentially with Neem, please go to her Facebook page and click 'Submit Message', which will give you the option to phone, email or Message her.

https://www.facebook.com/fuengirolahomehelp/

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Growing Old Abroad

The Beginning - volume 7 in the series Behind The Smile

The Beginning

Behind The Smile – The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya

(volume 7)

by Owen Jones

Review by Barry Boy

The Beginning is volume seven in the much-liked series Behind The Smile - The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya by Owen Jones.

Volume One in the series began when Lek was twenty-two and already working in Daddy's Hobby in Pattaya, Volume Seven goes back to before she was even born - just before, to the days when her mother was young and working in the 'na' or rice fields.

Even nowadays, life as a Thai rice-farmer is hard, but for many, there is some mechanisation, but, then, in the early Seventies, it was mostly manual labour.

Pang and her husband, Maar, lived with Pang's parents and worked their land. They all got on well, and worked for a better future for their family. One day, Pang announces that she is pregnant with their first child, and their lives change, as it always has done in all families around the world.

Lek has a happy childhood on the exterior, but she has her internal dialogue about her fears and insecurities. Ayr and Goong, her best friends, are there to help, but they drift apart for a while when Lek is forced to leave school at the age of twelve.

The stigma is to remain with her all her life.

The Beginning is written in the third person and the cover is apposite, being the same, except in title and colour, as the previous six. It is instantly recognisable in pink, being a diluted form of the colour of Volume One, which is red.

The Beginning: Behind The Smile -The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya (volume 7) will be published on December 26th, 2017 for $3.99, but the price will rice on January 1st to $4.99. However, you can pre-order it now for $2.99 at a discount of up to 45% and have it delivered to your device on Boxing Day, while you are recovering from a hectic Christmas Day.

What could be better?

Pre-order here:

Smashwords: http://smarturl.it/lek7?IQid=mps

Amazon: http://smarturl.it/lek7am?IQid=mps

Kobo: http://smarturl.it/lek7kobo?IQid=mps

It also gives you 25 days to catch up on any Lek Books that you haven't read yet.

See the full list here: http://smarturl.it/my-books?IQid=mps

That makes two of the volumes that are NaNoWriMo Winners!

NaNo-2017-Winner!

All the best,

and enjoy December despite the rush,

Owen

Podcast: Lek - The Beginning

Thai Food in Fuengirola

Thai Food in Fuengirola

I have been living and eating Thai food in Fuengirola for about a year, so I know the place fairly well. I also love Thai food. In fact, I lived in Thailand for thirteen years with my Thai wife and her family in a small, rice-farming village in the north.

So far, I have discovered four fully or partly Thai restaurants in Fuengirola and Los Boliches.

Mr Noodles: cooks some types of Thai food and Thai noodles from what I have seen, although I have not eaten there yet, because noodles are not my favourite food.

Padthaiwok: is located in the same street, opposite the bus station, as Mr. Noodles. It seems to be mostly noodles again, and so I have not eaten there, but my Thai wife has and she liked it. I did notice that they do not provide pork there and that it is Halal.

Srithai: is about two hundred yards opposite Padthaiwad in 'Fish Alley'. I have eaten there and loved the food. I can vouch for the fact that it is authentic. The staff are very friendly too.

Thai Lanna: this restaurant is located in Los Boliches. I have eaten here too and it is my favourite in the area. The food is fantastic and the decor made my wife cry one day when she was feeling particularly homesick.

I have been told that there is another in Los Boliches on beach road near the border with Fuengirola. My wife went looking for it one evening, but failed to find it.

The other thing that I want to say about the above restaurants is that the staff are either mostly or completely Thai. The waiters are often local, but the cooks are Thai.

Give them a try. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

** Breaking news! There is now a Thai home catering service active in Fuengirola and Los Boliches. I have tried their food too and it is authentic and delicious Thai cuisine cooked by Thai ladies. They will either cook for you in your home or pub for your special occasion or cook in their homes and deliver it. See Thai Home Catering Services in Fuengirola on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThaiCateringInFuengirola/ **

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Thai Food in Fuengirola

Pirated eBooks - Writers

Pirated eBooks - Writers

There seems to be two schools of though amongst writers concerning pirated ebooks: those who think it's a good thing or irrelevant and those who would have pirates walk the plank. I am in the latter group after discovering that one site was claiming to have given away 1,755 copies of one of my books when I have sold less than a hundred. That is just one ebook, I have fifty and that is just one pirate company and there are hundreds.

If you don't believe that search for 'Pirated eBooks' on Google. They are promoting hundreds of pirates and thousands of articles telling readers where to download free copies of copyrighted books and which the best download sites are. Thank you very much, Google!

Google was a good firm when it started but they have been absolute tossers since Panda (look it up - they closed millions of small Adsense accounts so that the big ones could make more money (so they have to write fewer cheques)).

Ebook Pirates

Anyway, if you hate the ebook pirates too, what can you do about it? There are two effective approaches:

1) Google 'pirated ebooks' and check the sites for your books; or Google 'mybook free pdf' where 'mybook' is the title of your book, and then issue a DMCA with Google for every instance where you discover a link to pirated content. Google will ask whether you have asked the company to desist from promoting a free ebook download link to your book. Just say 'Yes', but don't bother writing to them. They ask for so much evidence that you are the true author that it's a joke. If they reply at all.

2) Join Blasty. It is still free at the time of writing. They will find pirated copies of your book and issue a DCMA to Google for you at the click (or two) of your mouse. The process can even be automated. I have been with them a few months and have issued 1,198 DCMA's and there are 398 in the pipeline. All free. The link is below.

An important point to note about DCMA's is that they do not force the pirate to remove the reference to your book, but they force Google to stop promoting it. However, to be honest, if your stuff is not on Google, you might as well close shop.

So, there you have it: three options: ignore the piracy, combat the problem yourself, or let Blasty do it for you.

Here is the link to Blasty

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Pirated eBooks - Writers

Google Bias and Blacklisting

Google Bias and Blacklisting

If you are still not convinced that there is such a thing as Google Bias and Blacklisting, there is a simple test that you can try. In May 2016, I wrote an article for my blog called 'Living in Remote Thailand'. Today, I noticed in my logs that my blog had been flagged for that key phrase five times this month.

So, I entered it into Google, but my article did not appear on the first five pages, despite the fact that the search phrase appeared in very few of the results. How can that be?

I tried a few other search engines and these are the results for my article:

Bing: number 3 (after two paid entries)

Yahoo: number 3 (after two commercial entries)

DuckDuckGo: number 1

Ecosia: number 1

Google: not in first 50

Therefore, the conclusion is simple. If you want a load and I really mean A LOAD of commercial junk thrown at you when you are only looking for the answer to a simple question, then go for Google, but if you want facts, plain and simple, the others are a better bet.

You may be thinking that this is a one off, but I have further evidence that my work has been hidden by Google. I have a popular series of six books called Behind The Smile. The oldest of them is from 2012 and the website is from the same era.

Type Behind The Smile into the above search engines and see what you get. I'll save you the trouble:

Bing: number 3

Yahoo: number 5

DuckDuckGo: number 8

Ecosia: number 9

Google: number 38

Sometimes, I can't find it all, but my real point is that Google always puts commercial, paying, companies ahead of facts, because they don't care if you find what you want, they want you to buy something, so that they can prove that their system works for advertisers in order to justify their fees.

Carry out your own tests on Google Bias and Blacklisting and I am sure that you will discover as much corruption of the pure search results and poor reporting as I did.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Google Bias and Blacklisting

Citibank and Gambling

Citibank and Gambling

I have had my main bank account with the American giant financial organization Citibank for thirty years, but have spent more than half that time abroad and had very little contact with them, which suited both me and, I think, them perfectly. Anyway, whatever, Citibank never gave me cause for complaint, and indeed, allowed me to keep my account even after they found out that I had moved abroad to live (which my three British banks did not).

That happy situation lasted until a week ago.

We have moved back to the UK, so one of the first things my Thai wife wanted to do after hearing about it, was try her luck at the National Lottery.

Unfortunately, she only heard about it when we had arrived home and were fifteen minutes walk from the the nearest shop we could buy a ticket.

Still, undeterred, I knew that we could buy our national lottery tickets online, so I tried that.

However, the National Lottery kept reporting that an error was being generated by Citibank, so, with thirty minutes to go, I contacted them by phone.

The young American gentleman was very polite and seemingly desperate to resolve my problem, but time was ticking on.

"All sorted out, sir", he told me and I rang off.

However, nothing had changed, so, I had to phone back. Miraculously, I got the same person and he remembered me.

American Morality

"I'm sorry about this, sir", he said, "but I can resolve this payment problem by entering the transaction manually. One second... whom are you trying to send the money to?"

"The National Lottery", I replied.

"Oh," he said sheepishly, "then that is the problem".

"What is?" I asked bewildered.

"Citibank does not condone gambling..."

"I'm not asking Citibank to gamble", I said. "I just want to use MY money in MY country to buy a lottery ticket in THE NATIONAL LOTTERY that was established by OUR democratically elected government!"

"Yes, I understand", he replied, "but I cannot sanction the transfer. Sorry..."

"You (expletive) what?" I asked as pointedly as I could.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I am offended by strong language..."

"I don't give a shit what you are offended by!" I blurted out. "What offends me is private American companies coming over here imposing their morality on us! It's like bloody Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria but without the violence! Be a small-minded prick in your own country, but don't think you can go abroad and preach your crap!

"Perhaps your high and mighty bank should have learned this lesson before they went gambling on sub-prime mortgages with their clients' money! Bloody hypocrites!"

"I understand", he said rather forlorn.

"Expect my account to be closed within the week!" I promised.

We parted company, and I will never give American companies the benefit of the doubt again - an alternative from any country will get preference from now on - especially where Citigroup and Citibank is concerned.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Citibank and Gambling

Visitors from Belize

Hello Dear Readers,

Welcome to my new Belize visitors!

I have never noticed a lot of Belize visitors to this blog before. In fact, I can't remember ever having seen any reference to Belize in my logs before.

However, in the first twelve days of October, people from Belize have become my third most active readers after Americans and the British!

The stats for the first twelve days are as follows:

01] United States us 21,581

02] Great Britain gb 6,066

03] Belize bz 2,995

04] Germany de 2,538

05] Slovak Republic sk 2,041

06] France fr 1,299

07] Russian Federation ru 853

08] Ukraine ua 784

09] Spain es 754

10] Thailand th 252

Normally, Spain is number three.

Strange behaviour, but you are welcome, my new Belize visitors, keep it up!

Your Computer: The Spy You Trust

Your Computer: The Spy You Trust

We all have some sort of computer these days, don't we? If you don't have a desktop computer, you may have a laptop, and if not those then a tablet or smartphone. If you don't have any of those, perhaps you have a new smart TV or fridge or burglar alarm, which uses the Internet to transfer its signal to you. They can all be used to spy on you.

Let's call all these Internet-enabled devices 'smart', because the Internet is the only difference between a phone and a smartphone, a TV and a smart TV, etc. All these smart devices can be hacked - I'm sure that you are aware of that, and if they can be hacked, they can be used to spy on you.

Now think about this. If ne'er-do-wells can take control of your device, what if the manufacturers left easy access to them for the government or the police to watch what you were doing - in essence spy on you?

These entry points are commonly referred to as 'back-doors'.

If this is true, then the government or police can probably use your trusted computer devices to spy on you by remote control. They would be able to listen in on conversations, take pictures and even use the device's geolocation capability to track where you are and so, also where you go.

In this way, the computer devices that we have all come to rely so heavily upon can be used far more effectively than even the most experienced secret agent. Not only that, but whereas secret agents (and even just police officers in general) are extremely costly to train, almost anyone can listen in on a conversation or watch a video and record it if it sounds as if their boss might be interested in it.

Think about the ramifications of the above.

The trusted computer, Internet, and smart devices could become - or already be - our jailers!

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Your Computer: The Spy You Trust

British Bureaucracy

British Bureaucracy

My Thai wife and I arrived back in the UK for the first time in five years last Wednesday, so our first encounter with British bureaucracy was at Rhoose airport's immigration. My wife was coming in on a five-year Spanish Residency Card, and the official had never seen an Asian with one before. The poor man didn't know what to do, so he gave her a six-month visa.

A friend coming in six months ago in exactly the same circumstances, obtained an open-ended right to remain for his wife, but they could also have given her ninety days (I think). 'Get her residency as soon as you can', he said to me quietly.

The following Friday, I went to the Job Centre to see about a National Insurance number for her. The official turned to his computer, and I waited while he called up the right page. After ten minutes, I asked whether there was a problem. 'No', he replied, 'I'm just Googling how to apply for a new NI number'.

I couldn't believe my ears! British bureaucracy... even civil servants, now have to use an American search engine to find the correct government policy! It doesn't sound right to me. I wanted to ask whether they still receive training, but civil servants are not renowned for their sense of humour.

It turns out that we have to travel fifty miles to make the application!

So, that left residency to sort out, and to get more information, we visited the local Citizen's Advice Centre (C.A.B.). The man took one look at the stamp in my wife's passport and left to discuss the matter with his supervisor. 'I'm sorry', he said, 'but this is way over our heads. We can't even understand how you got this far!'.

'Research, hard work and perseverance', I replied.

'We can only suggest that you go to see an immigration lawyer', he said offering me a list to choose from.

I declined it, and left, thinking how sad it was that the C.A.B. had degenerated into a mere funnel for the local branch of the legal profession... especially since legal aid has been abolished.

What sort of a country have I brought my wife back to?

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: British Bureaucracy