I think it was a bug in the last version, a recent update sorted it out - it was bloody annoying though!

I'd consider renting an apartment/spare room when you find somewhere you like, it'll normally work out a lot cheaper and you can cook for yourself to save money. Plus there's no people waking you up at 3am running around drunk. You might also want to consider Internet access, some places (eg Vietnam) block many sites like Facebook - that said that might provide a big boost in productivity! others often have pretty unreliable internet out of cities. That's assuming Internet access is important for you...

It's been a while but I integrated PHPBB with a few sites I've created, it was a bit fiddly, but there were a few guides on the forums on how to integrate the login into your own php code. As has been mentioned before it's important to keep them up to date for security as it tends to constantly get probed by hackers. And I can attest to the spam you get as others have said, definitely make sure you've a decent captcha/ human check on there.

Thanks - opted out now :D