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Even though I've been to Thailand multiple times, I am no expert on Thai culture, but I have been in the mental health field since early 80's, financial problems rarely are the cause of suicides. Family problems can be a contributing factor especially when the individual is isolated from their family or are seen as an outcast. The 3 factors reported in study after study are: 1) Loneliness/isolation, 2) "Thwarted Belongingness" - not feeling accepted by others/society, and 3) perceived "burdensomness". According to Thomas Joiner, a leading researcher on suicide, it is often the feeling like a burden that pushes the individual over the edge. Suicide rates have gone up with the pandemic. I suspect Thailand lacks some of the social safety nets available in the West like dedicated suicide hotlines or walk-in mental health clinics that can often prevent someone on the brink from taking that last step. Cluster behavior is often also associated with suicide rates.

I don't quiet get why anyone who disclosed they used marijuana in the past is an issue? Do they want people to lie? Why is this even an issue today? Biden's camp needs to move into 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/19/jen-psaki-says-5-staffers-no-longer-employed-over-marijuana-use-policy/4764283001/

Truly one of the rudest, inconsiderate posts I have ever seen. @Drifter, you should be ashamed of yourself.

As this thread is illustrating, there are arguments pro and con the bars and pro and con the apps. The single common factor seems to be that taking a boy from the apps will end up something like 50% less than from a bar, given all the costs involved in visiting a bar, drinks, off fee etc. To my way of thinking, once more and more tourists start to return, it is surely a fact of life that economics alone will result in even less visitors to the bars. As before the pandemic, the future seems to be with the increasing number of Chinese and other Asian visitors. But as many have written before, what this group want from a bar is different from the earlier western visitors. Leaving the mainland Chinese aside for a moment, other Asians have a definite preference for massage with happy endings and attending saunas with their friends. They might then go to a bar to see the show before ending up in a disco. Its hard to lump all mainland Chinese into one group but most on tour groups only visit the bars as a tourist-type experience just as they would the Grand Palace. Before the pandemic, more and more Chinese were embarking on solo tours and I expect their numbers will continue to increase exponentially in future. But Ithey tend to stay in the higher end hotels and I have not read many stories here of younger gay Chinese taking boys off from gogo bars. Gogo bars basically don't exist anywhere else in the region (perhaps Manila apart) and so their vacations are filled with high-end shopping, massages, saunas, discos and perhaps an occasional visit to a gogo bar. Drop the gogo bar, and this is the their behaviour pattern in places like Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei. In my crystal ball, therefore, I see little hope of the bars returning to their earlier glory. Some Thais are obviously returning during the pandemic and may continue to do so. But their numbers are small; nothing like in the 1980s and 90s. More Asians will eventually do so. But the only way the bars can survive is a radical rethink of the business model. It will no longer be acceptable to have over high drink prices with bored boys in underwear rotating around a stage and more interested in their phones than the audience. Shows depending on ludicrously made-up female impersonators bore everyone except the Thais. Big cock shows can be of interest and I suppose there will always be an audience for fucking shows, although the massive spread of pornography on the internet has in my view reduced even their impact, if only because when I last visited a bar years ago, the participants appeared so bored. That is so unlike the 1980s and 90s when the boys in most of the growing number of gogo bars exuded fun. They interacted with each other, laughed and their sense of fun was infectious. It must be more than a dozen years ago when the poster Shamelessmack in his first incarnation proposed a new model for gogo bars. This did away with large spaces in favour of a few smaller closed ones where different types of gogo entertainment could take place. I cannot recall any of the detail other than it did depend on nudity in at least one of the spaces. Perhaps genuine strip-tease in another. But since Thaksin's Social Order campaigns 20 years ago nudity outside a show seems no longer been permissible. Yet with the police and the army having a stake in both ownership and the regular brown envelopes, surely it is in their interest in pushing the legal regulations to the limit to ensure greater profitability. I wonder what radical changes readers would like to change in the gogo bar model, both to make them more fun and a must-see for gay visitors (and expats).

Moonlight's nightly intro of its star performers is available on Facebook. Some new faces/bodies, Nicky is still the lead off of the parade. No Babe sighting as of yet. When there is a wide angle shot - the seats closest to the stage are empty.

the woman providing meals and services to the homeless is a saint

I thought I’d put this placeholder thread for now until my current trip is finished, which is going to be soon. The good news: after a rough few months after Brazil opened up to the world last July, where the Rio saunas were ghost towns with few boys, and even fewer clients, I’d like to report that Rio is back. Probably not as “back” as it was pre-pandemic, with the wall-to-wall muscle in 117, and crazy parties in 202, but “good enough” to spend time in. As it is, the picking are slim in the pandemic, and I am thankful that there are options in Rio at all. This is because as Brazil opened up to foreign visitors at the end of July 2020, I found that Sao Paulo was the place to be, with even boys from Rio flocking to Lagoa because the tourists numbers was still low in Rio. As 2020 drew a close however, Rio gathered strength, and now, with the city of Sao Paulo’s numerous openings and closings and Fragata, the once-promising alternative to Lagoa opening to some fan-fare, and then slowly slid into a whimper to its (temporary?) closure in December, I was also able to visit other Brazilian cities with the new boyfriend, as chronicled in the previous thread I started last year, and still need to complete. In this thread, I’ll report about my experiences in Rio over the holidays, and in the 3 months after. And since I spent the New Year in Fortaleza, I’ll report about that too. Putting aside the obvious horrible stuff that has happened during the pandemic (so far), I’d say that I was able to take advantage of the low tourist numbers, discounted hotel and AirBNB prices, and the bargain basement airfare to Sao Paulo and Rio from the USA. This is a unique point of our history, and oddly enough due to the “work from home” mode that the majority of us have adopted to mitigate the spread of the COVID, I was able to spend the majority of my (post-July 2020) time, in Brazil. And I won’t expand on the mountain of risks I have been taking (and continue to take) with venturing out to this country, I have been lucky enough to have kept my health, and my sanity, in check. I hope it keeps up that way. So here I am, in the last leg of the trips I’ve taken that will be chronicled in this trip report. This trip was made possible because last Janaury, I was able to book three speculative flights into the future, all at $1200 business roundtrip, not knowing if I can make all the flights in the dates I’ve booked them at, but since the prices are so low, and with the elimination of change fees at least this year, I’d say the risk of losing my money from these bookings are low. But it now March 2021, and the second wave (third? fourth?) is upon Brazil, which is extra concerning because even with all the lessons and trials we all have learned and endured in this pandemic, Brazil meanwhile, seems to have regressed somewhat, back to a scary time in the pandemic. Regardless, I am still soldiering on and flying into to the belly of the beast, so the question was just what Brazilian city will I go to next. I see city after city announce their lockdown plans, and mine and BF’s plans to spend a week in Sao Paulo, has been wrecked by Sao Paulo’s super duper serious pandemic phase: And Lagoa of course has to comply, and is closed at least to the 30th of March: But Rio de Janeiro, being Rio de Janeiro, even with some sort of lockdown, is still semi-open. There is just something about Rio that really can’t get shut down. With notices from Lion’s and 202 on their Instagram, and the notice at the door at 117: Which means diverting my flight, and AirBNB rentals, to a stay in Rio. Armed with my RT-PCR test, I took the United Sao Paulo flight from Houston, which was half-empty, and then the flight from Sao Paulo to Santos Dumont in Rio was filled to the gills. And the ultimate sign of the times was a dedicated COVID testing area at the mezannine floor at International terminal at Terminal 3 in Guarulhos. And the place looked busy: Another sign of the times: greeting me in Rio was a cute masked Azul mascot: though the mask does look ill-fitting. Speaking of masks, everyone in the airport was wearing masks, and the Uber ride had me and the driver wear masks the whole ride, but there was a lot of mask-less people milling around the streets of Copacabana where my AIrBNB was. So please be patient, I will continue this thread when this current trip is over (and it’ll be soon). Next, a December to remember.

A word of warning for those who have been transferred from the US site. For around a decade one of the best on line apps for meeting up with young gay Asians both around the continent and sometimes in other countries was fridae. Founded by a Singaporean, it used to be a paid site with an annual subscription of around $45 giving you access to what was claimed as 500,000 members. I joined around 2005 and found it a great site, well worth the subscription. Not sure when it happened but perhaps around 8 years ago it was sold to a business concern. Quickly it went downhill and I left the site. Now it is all but dead and subscription is free but a waste of time. Examples. 1. Check on who is online from various countries ar any one time. This will always show between 1,600 and 1,800 - always. It recently included 59 members allegedly in Afghanistan and 60 in Antarctica! Click on the country and you discover that there was in fact just one member in each country! 2. Go into advanced search (for those who paid their subscription) and insert something like Thailand guys under 35. It will provide a list but the average age of those on the list will in almost every case be well over 35! Of 45 presently listed in Singapore, only one is under 35! Most are in their 40s, 50s and 60s. 3. The list of saunas, massage places and coffee shops includes some which closed as long ago as 2015. 4. The news items of gay interest used to have a couple of posts each week. It has had nothing for the last 4 months.

Seen on Facebook : Moonlight will be open on 18 March, We have hot promotion BUY 1 GET 1 FREE!! DRINK all night. Please join us and fun with us, we missed you every one

+1 I think the moderator of this forum should delete @Drifter offensive comment.

It's a real problem. Forcing people to lie about their behavior makes them vulnerable and that's not something you want in the Whitehouse. Plus telling people it'd be ok, just tell the truth and then turning around and doing this... not good. Though on the other hand, I've had a couple pot head boys live with me and the kind of person who has to have pot every day isn't the kind of person I'd hire, especially for a critical role. But occasionally or in the past, who gives a fuck?

The 7 days plan is for vaccinated person with negative test result. Not sure if its already implemented but 7 days is still 7 days too long for me.

Not sure what counts as "1st gay experience" I was 19 or 20. Thought I was in love with my friend. When you're young one really doesn't know what love is. But when I think about him now I remember how it was. Was before internet porn. I knew very little about sex. I was certainly drawn to him and wished I could hold him all night long. We lived on the same floor in our college dorm. Back then there were few guys that made my heart go pitter-pat. John did. I was in lust with him for sure and was very sweet on him. Back then guys wore short gym shorts. His were tomato soup red and made his ass look so pretty, not that I knew what to do about it. I became aware that guys penetrated each other, yes, but I had little awareness of it, that it would feel good. I was very closeted and afraid of being gay, so in my mind I wasn't mindful of being sexual. In a sense I was in denial, yet my eyes knew what I liked, what filled my heart with lust. One night we were sitting on the couch in his room, watching TV. He reclined to snooze, his head pointed away from me. We might have smoked some weed. I drew John's feet across my lap. I wanted John to stretch his legs out across me. I began stroking his calves and then his thighs. John didn't react. My desire overcame fear. I slid my hand higher, inside his gym shorts, feeling his butt. Was so exciting. Eventually I reached around and brushed my hand against his jock. In the dark I saw his head turn and look at me. I stopped. Shortly after that I went back to my room. I was not good at processing so many cues from John. College boys dish out so much teasing and BS. But now I see how much John really wanted to be sexual with me and that he was sweet on me too. In retrospect, he must have had experience, probably with the same neighbor boy that visited campus once to drive John home. He wanted to try with me. We ended up in similar situations two more times. But by the time I was coming out to myself, he had moved on to getting with girls. He still thinks about me. I got an email from him not long ago. I'll always remember my John.

Damn that's a hot story!

When I was around 15-16 and had an avid teenage sexual appetite, I had a serious infatuation with my best friend, a very cute blond blue-eyed boy, my age. A real crush. One day, we playfully started to wrestle. Don’t ask me how I found the courage to kiss him and to start undressing him. His smooth chest was glistening with fresh sweat, and a pungent aroma emanated from his pits. I instinctively licked his salty sweat off, sniffed and licked his pits, and slowly, very timidly, I went down his abs until I peeled his underwear off and buried my nose in his very fragrant pubes. I found the scent of his crotch, his groin, his sweaty balls, and his musky ass wildly intoxicating: I just couldn’t get enough of it. His uncut dick was hard as a rock and, even if at the beginning I didn’t particularly like the cheesy smell of his foreskin, it contributed to my horniness. I learned to appreciate that cock scent later on. That was the first cock I sucked, the first boy I kissed, the first sweet cum I tasted. I still vividly remember the fragrances and the excitement. The rest is history.

Vinapu, that gives me so much hope!

Tul is Knock, Max is Korn, those two plus Ohm Pawat are my three favorites

8 people are dead in Atlanta, Georgia. A Southern Baptist white male kills Asians. This is a direct result from hearing our former President Trump spew his “China Virus” narrative all over national television last year. When Americans hear this shit, they are often not smart enough to read and dissect things on their own. They are taught to believe what they are told from the pulpit. The pulpit told them Trump was the 2nd coming. Elections matter. Keep Trump and anyone that supported him out of politics forever, is crucial to the American people in order to survive.

Financial problem alone might not be the major reason for suicide but i believe the relationship and family problems are also due to or worsen by financial difficulty. If u lost a job as a sole provider to your family, and as a result, your partner leave u, that could be a trigger. Mental health issues needs a support system and often those will be your partner or family. Having issues with them could mean losing your support system, which can very well leads to suicide. Hope thai will survive the pandemic. On an unrelated news, I just watched the news that myanmar citizens are starting to seek refuge in border thailand cities. Made me think how this will affect thailand who are also suffering right now.

My favorite book was the comic Adventures of TINTIN

Any attempt by a political party to address the huge wealth-gap between the small minority of very rich and the rest of the population inevitably leads to a coup and a military government serving the needs of royalty and the ruling elite. Today, elections aren't needed; the junta just bans any party which seeks meaningful change. I strongly recommend the documentary, though it fails to deal adequately with the political aspects of the crisis. Some of the personal testimonies are heart-breaking.

I saw this ad on Facebook for Paleo Robbie and decided to try them. I was not expecting very much but I was extremely surprised as the food tastes fantastic and the portions are huge. I have to break each box I get into half for 2 meals. The cost for one meal is about 400 baht. I split that box to make 2 meals at 200 baht each. I have some photos attached but they don't do the food justice. You order each week what you want and they deliver to your door the following week. They are reliable so far and I have loved each meal. I over ordered some some friends are having some free food this week as well. They use no artificial ingredients and the beef is from Australia or New Zealand. You can recycle their dishes or get throwaway. As I said, each meal I have had this week has been truly high quality and tastes delicious. As I break them into 2 meals, it is about 500 calories per meal for me. The BF and I split one meal the first night and both of us were stuffed. He also enjoyed the farang food! Check out their menu and photos. Everything is very accurate and the containers come with your name printed on them with the ingredients and nutritional information. https://paleorobbie.com/mealplan

Once again Thai government rules and regulations require mountains of paperwork. And as those retired in Thailand are only too well aware, government decisions are made without anyone thinking through the many potential problems that these decisions end up creating. This documentary brings home the enormous wealth gap in the country. But I found it interesting that the main reason for suicide even today is problems with personal and family relationships. That this should account for between 50% to 60% of all suicides is surely extraordinary. Then even with covid19 financial problems are only fourth on the list. Even worse, though, is the lack of an infrastructure that can take care of increasing mental health problems. Makes you reconsider "the land of smiles"!

Sad news really. 6 asian women amongs the 8 killed. And the murdered even made an attempt to say that he is not racist and blame it to his sex addiction. The police even backing the murdered in a sympathetic tone saying he has a bad day.

Please,please,please,please and please!

In that case, I suggest you ask the mamasan to point you in the direction of guys that don’t shoot such a big load. The Tsunami warning siren needs to be sounded before some guys unload, particularly when they haven’t had a customer for a few days.

Madrid Tavern in Patpong 1 , trip to BKK without having pizza there is trip wasted as long as I'm concerned

He will be missed, one of my favorite posters. I know he was living with and taking care of his sick mother, I wonder what happened to her. And I am sorry Adam did not see Trump leaving the White House in disgrace. He would have enjoyed it.

CNN claims that the EU signed the contract with Astra Zeneca one day before the UK ... https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/17/europe/uk-astrazeneca-vaccine-contract-details-intl/index.html "Soriot confirmed to La Repubblica that his company had agreed to supply the UK before other markets, saying it was "fair enough" because the UK had reached an agreement with AstraZeneca earlier than the EU. But the UK's official contract is actually dated August 28, one day after the EU's contract."

There was a guy at Pointe sauna who agreed to just about everything but rimming. He would n't even let me look at what seemed to be a wonderful ass. On our third time together, he raised his ass and made it easily accessible to my mouth. I looked, rushed, and munched on down. It was easily one of the most rimmable asses on one of the most exciting boys in a long time. It was pure delight. He had a very muscular body, smooth skin, a very smooth ass, and an anus without a single hair. That's my favorite ass, and to have such a delightful guy essentially make this a farewell gift to me is a memory to be cherished. I love Rio!

Senso indeed continues to be closed. The same old "temporarily closed" sign, just a sheet of paper, tacked to the door and starting to fall off.