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I agree! There will be some that make bank, but most wont. These online models come and go and that's for a reason.

Sad. And if u ask me, she didnt even do any crime. She failed to show up on her court date, on a weak case of insulting the religion by appearing in a religious event she sponsored wearing a women's clothing. Im not sure why she didnt just bring the case to civil court (superior to religious court) and challenge it. Based on previous cases, she has a high chance to win. I guess she is tired with all the nuisance and want to flee for a better place. Glad to know she did get refugee status and hope she will survive in whatever country she will relocated to. Just heard in the news that she was arrested in thailand for holding uncertified/expired passport, and wanted by malaysia for obstruction of civil officer from performing their duty.....

I looked in the mirror.

When bottom got the runs

hope Thailand will not yield to Malaysian's pressure and will not hand her over. That would be disgrace specially since as spoon states , she did not even do any crime.

From Channel News Asia HANOI: Vietnam's capital Hanoi will further ease its coronavirus restrictions from this week, the government said, with new cases on the decline and the majority of its adult population partially vaccinated. Most construction projects can resume from Wednesday (Sep 22), authorities said late on Sunday, adding further easing would follow, with average new daily cases down to just 20. So far, 94 per cent of Hanoi's adult population of 5.75 million has received one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, with the aim of completing second doses by the end of November, said deputy chairman of Hanoi's ruling People's Committee, Duong Duc Tuan. "We can't maintain the social distancing measures indefinitely," Tuan said in a statement. Hanoi has escaped the brunt of a fierce wave of coronavirus infections in Vietnam since late April, recording less than 50 of the more than 17,000 COVID-19 deaths nationwide, and just 4,414 of the country's total 687,000 cases. Epicentre and business hub Ho Chi Minh City, more than 1,500km away by road, has been the hardest hit, with 49 per cent of the country's cases and 78 per cent of its fatalities. Hanoi became busier last week after authorities removed dozens of checkpoints and allowed restaurants to offer takeaway services. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/vietnam-covid-19-hanoi-ease-restrictions-vaccination-2189551

From The Thaiger An Australian and Thai married couple, and an American man, who were on death row in Bangkok on charges for trafficking crystal methamphetamine have all been released from prison. A report from the Sydney Morning Herald says they had been accused of smuggling half a tonne of crystal methamphetamine for the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in Thailand. After being cleared by the Supreme Court last week, 37 year old Luke Cook from Western Australia arrived in Sydney and Tyler Gerard, who is from California, flew back to the United States. The Sydney Morning Herald says Luke Cook, who used to run a bar and guest house in Pattaya, has been pleading his innocence since he was jailed in 2017 and his father has campaigned for his release. According to the report, they had been arrested following accusations that Luke Cook had been paid $US10 million by the Hells Angels to smuggle 500 kilograms of methamphetamine aboard his yacht where Tyler Gerard was said to be a crew hand. Police had alleged that Cook dumped the drugs overboard when a Thai navy vessel approached and a package with just over 50 kilograms of meth was found on a beach in Chon Buri. The Melbourne-based Capital Punishment Justice Project have supported the defence lawyers and argued it was a set up and the men are innocent. In a press release published on the Pattaya News, Thailand Bail Legal Services announced that the case has been completely dismissed by the Supreme Court and both Luke Cook and Tyler Gerard are out of prison, out of Thailand, and back home. https://thethaiger.com/news/national/australian-and-american-on-thai-death-row-released-from-thai-death-row-supreme-court-clears-drug-trafficking-case

Bangkok gay bars are closed!

I know I'm biased, but Japan is the only place where I feel totally safe no matter where I am or what time it is.

good to know, that's my project after "Don't Say No' Binge watching seems to work for me better

You said you'd bottom! Bummer!

On my only visit I also stayed with a couple of gay friends with a home there. But i have another unrelated reason for liking the city. As part of a round the world ticket I had flown in from LAX and then on to SFO. The airline code for Palm Springs is PPS. When I got my monthly mileage statement I was amazed to discover that I had many thousands of miles for what is just a 100 mile trip. Checking in more detail, I found that American Airlines had credited me with mileage to DPS. DPS is Denpasar Bali! I'm the first to complain when mileage is under credited. Did I call American about the over credit? I'm not stupid! LOL Like @TotallyOz, I have visited all the top ten cities. Much as I love New Zealand which I visited twice for extensive trips, Wellington is too windy and too wet for my liking. I'd need to be in Auckland. Thanks to friends, I have spent many happy visits to Sydney which a few years ago would have been my first choice. But the climate issues and the dreadful annual bush fires would put me off now. So I'd opt now for the lovely city of Stockholm.

I am more enjoying "Bite Me". I find "Don't Say No" is too drawn out... And yes, Fiat needs to man up!!

'm churning through 'Don't Say No ' , like one above starts with episode 0, up to ep2 so-so but from ep.3 gets interesting. Entry of new character, Leon , brother of Leo one of two main characters seem to enliven and speed action a bit. Don't like Fiat's hystericals but hope he will man up as episodes go on. "Together With Me" or "Dark Blue Kiss " it's not but quite very watchable. There's even familiar line" you need money for tuition or your mom went to hospital ? "

Donald Trump was the president

Check Out (2022?) The main series will air in 2022, but there is an episode 0 available on youtube: Looks very promising !!! It has some unusual elements like one guy is smoking and english songs and rather fast development...

Make It Right Season 1 (2016) and Season 2 (2017) I like the series. It's another peace of Thai BL history. The story is similar to Love Sick The Series, but the development of the main couple is a bit faster (though still slow ...). Tee (in Make It Right) is a bit more understanding with Fuse, while Phun (in Love Sick) was quite pushy which I found a bit annoying. I knew it!

Nitiman The Series (2021) I didn't particularly like it. Mainly because I don't like the type of story "I am obsessed with you and I will stalk you until you love me" that much. Also, main couple was rather boring, and the other potential couples where just too much in then background... Is he from Isaan?

That's the closing sentence in a highly personal profile of writer Colm Toibin that appears in the current issue of The New Yorker. The author of many gay themed novels, Toibin didn't learn to read until he was nine. But once he found his groove, he began to make up for lost time. If your tempted by this piece, you can read Toibin describing an orgy in Barcelona at this link: https://www.scribd.com/document/93681837/Barcelona-1975-a-story-from-Colm-Toibin-s-THE-EMPTY-FAMILY "Secrets and Lies" by D.T. Max he Irish writer Colm Tóibín is a busy man. Since he published his first novel, “The South,” at thirty-five, in 1990, he has written eleven more books of fiction. He has also published three reported books, three collections of essays, dozens of introductions to other writers’ work, prefaces to art catalogues, an opera libretto, plays, poems, and so many reviews that it’s surprising when a week goes by and he hasn’t been in at least one of the New York, London, or Dublin papers. When I asked Tóibín—the name is pronounced “cuh-lem toe-bean”—how many articles he had written, he could only guess. “I suppose thousands might be accurate,” he said, adding that his level of output used to be more common among writers: “Anthony Burgess, whom I knew slightly, used to write a thousand words a day. He produced a great amount of literary journalism, as well as the novels.” But, unlike Burgess, Tóibín gravitates to assignments demanding considerable diligence. Reviewing a recent biography of Fernando Pessoa, by Richard Zenith, Tóibín read the eleven-hundred-page text and three translations of Pessoa’s “The Book of Disquiet.” Tóibín sometimes assimilates his subject to the point that the writer in question begins to sound like one of his own characters. His Pessoa essay, published in August in the London Review of Books, begins, “As he grew older, Fernando Pessoa became less visible, as though he were inexorably being subsumed by dreams and shadows.” “I have absolute curiosity and total commitment,” Tóibín, who is sixty-six, told me. He described his appetite for pickup work to me as a form of intellectual fomo. “You learn a huge amount by opening yourself to things that are going on,” he explained, offering as a case in point his new novel, “The Magician,” a fictionalization of Thomas Mann’s life. “I could not have done the book had I not foolishly taken on three biographies of Mann in 1995 that were all this size,” he said, spreading his hands far apart. There are many other demands on Tóibín’s time: he is a literature professor at Columbia University and the chancellor of the University of Liverpool (“You have no idea how beautiful the robes are”). He occasionally helps curate exhibits for the Morgan Library & Museum, in Manhattan, and, with his agent, Peter Straus, he runs a small publishing imprint in Dublin, Tuskar Rock Press. “I really enjoy anything that’s going on,” he told me, adding, “If there was a circus, I’d join it.” When many novelists are done writing for the day, they want to be alone. Tóibín wants company. At literary festivals, he is a charming presence—modest, attentive, and eager to entertain the audience. “A novel is a thousand details,” he likes to say. “A long novel is two thousand details.” He has distanced himself from the trend for autofiction by declaring, “The page you face is not a mirror. It is blank.” Richard Ford told me, “Colm’s the best on his feet of any writer I know.” Once the panels end, Tóibín is up for an escapade. Ford went on, “He’s great fun and naughty, not constantly watching his back.” Last year, Tóibín and Damon Galgut, the South African writer, attended a festival in Cape Town. When Tóibín asked him what would be fun to see, Galgut suggested that they visit the Owl House, a work of outsider art ten hours away, in the Eastern Cape. Off they went on an almost nine-hundred-mile round trip, completed in four or five days. Tóibín was not much impressed by the art, but along the way he did a mischievous imitation of a novelist they both know, played with the idea of a foreign-language film with subtitles that told a completely unrelated story, and discussed why baboons have red buttocks. “It was an absolute lark,” Tóibín told me. Michael Ondaatje recalls running into Tóibín in 2005, after a five-day literary festival in Toronto. Tóibín told him that, during the event, he’d written a short story in his hotel room. Ondaatje exclaimed, “But . . . you were everywhere! ” Tóibín’s appetite for social life is reminiscent of one of his idols, Henry James, who accepted a hundred and seven invitations to dinner in London during the winter season of 1878-79. Tóibín thinks that his own record occurred in 1981, during his years as a journalist in Dublin: almost every night, he said, he was “out drinking with friends and hanging out in every pub, going to every art thing.” In part, Tóibín is searching, like James, for an anecdote that will grow into a story. The germ can lie fallow in his mind for a long time. His best-known novel, “Brooklyn”—which was published in 2009, and later was adapted into a film starring Saoirse Ronan—took its inspiration from a chance comment made by a visitor paying a condolence call after the death of his father, more than forty years earlier, when Tóibín was twelve and growing up near the Irish coast, south of Dublin. “One evening, a woman came and said her daughter had gone to Brooklyn and showed us all these letters,” he recalled. “When she was gone, I heard people saying that the daughter had come back from America and not told anyone she’d married there.” I asked Tóibín several times why he enjoyed being so busy—was it a way to escape “the dark side of his soul,” as his Mann character muses in the new novel? Tóibín resists analysis in general. Once, when I inquired if he was happy, he answered, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘happy.’ ” This time, he initially quoted the musical “Oklahoma!”: “ ‘I’m just a girl who can’t say no.’ ” But I pressed him, and eventually he said, “I think I’m sort of sad, and I’m not sad when I’m out with people—the sadness just sort of goes, departs, leaves me.” I wasn’t sure if I’d achieved a breakthrough or been rewarded for my persistence. Tóibín tries to please, if he can. Continues at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/how-colm-toibin-burrowed-inside-thomas-manns-head

all boils down to salaries offered. World over migrants were , are and will be accepting lower paying jobs because they know that hardship will bring fruits when they send money back to families or return home . 100 baht will buy more in Udon Nowhere than in Bangkok , 1000 baht will go further in Laos than Thailand, 10000 won will go further in Thailand than Korea and 100 000 euros may not buy , say , rural house in Germany but may in Korea and so on. It's why people who are almost destitute where they work upon return home they may have quite luxurious lifestyle according to local standards. And that's the reason they take jobs or pay locals won't.

From The Nation Aswin Kwanmuang spoke after inspecting the Bueng Nong Bon drainage tunnel project, which stretches from Nong Bon in southeastern Bangkok to the Chao Phraya River. The 5-metre-wide tunnel runs west for 9.4 kilometres at a depth of 30 metres. Starting from Rama IX Park in Nong Bon, the tunnel links with Bang Ao Canal and features seven drainage stations along the route to Bangkok’s main river. The project launched in January 2016 and is scheduled for completion on February 15 before opening a month later. “Bueng Nong Bon drainage tunnel will help prevent flooding on On Nut Road, Udom Suk Road and Sukhumvit Road,” said Aswin. The tunnel would increase drainage efficiency over an area of about 85 square kilometres, covering the districts of Prawet, Suan Luang, Phra Khanong, Bang Na, he added. https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/40006292

I know a few Mexicans and Brasilians that have OF accounts, they said the make enough to get by, I read an article that the average payout is $180 usd a month, many online sex workers who have established a presence on OnlyFans. Many of them talk about how difficult it is to earn decent money on the platform since a big part of it is wrapped up in being able to build a following. Beyond that, you have to spend time and energy to produce content consistently for some time before the account starts turning a big enough profit. Plus the 20% commission Many people generally brag about earnings in general, especially to justify doing it, no? Not saying I don't believe you, sounds like the exception more than the rule.

last guy has strangely shaped smartphone in his front pocket

I stayed there almost two weeks and it is super nice. Great location between Copacabana and Ipanema on the beach with nice restaurants nearby. The lounge has breakfast lunch and dinner free in a very nice setting with a view. 4 1/2 star.

you not alone, #me too although 'lady ' seems overstatement

This is the mug they gave to us today.

Car mob rallies against tanks, troops and Prayut From Bangkok Post Cars and motorcyles kick off an anti-coup and anti-government rally at Asoke intersetion on Sunday. (Photo: Apichit Jinakul) More than 1,000 cars, motorcycles and other vehicles set off from Asoke intersection in heavy rain, the beginning of a "car mob" rally set to wind through the streets of the capital in another bid to oust Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. The demonstration was held in conjunction with the 15th anniversary of the Sept 19, 2006 coup that ousted then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. That was followed by the May 22, 2014 coup that marked the beginning of Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha's long premiership. The two coups were closely connected, red-shirt leader Nattawut Saikuar said before the rally kick-off. "The 2014 coup was staged to show that the one in 2006 was not a waste of effort (by the army)," he said. Red-shirt activist Sombat Boonngam-anong said the armed forces justified military coups as a way to resolve political conflicts, but in reality military intervention was used to open the doors for generals to enter politics. A long procession of about 500 cars and more than 1,000 motorcycles began the political convoy set to head over the Krungthep Bridge to Thon Buri and then recross the Chao Phraya river to end at Democracy Monument. The rally kicked off with a piece of dramatic symbolism. Mr Nattawut, who donned a taxi uniform, rammed a taxi into a cardboard mockup of a tank while demonstrators chanted for Gen Prayut's ouster. The stunt was a reminder of taxi driver Nuamthong Praiwan, who spray painted his vehicle with an anti-coup message and smashed into an army tank on Sept 30, 2006 to show his opposition to the coup. The rally kicked off with a piece of dramatic symbolism. Mr Nattawut, who donned a taxi uniform, rammed a taxi into a cardboard mockup of a tank while demonstrators chanted for Gen Prayut's ouster. The stunt was a reminder of taxi driver Nuamthong Praiwan, who spray painted his vehicle with an anti-coup message and smashed into an army tank on Sept 30, 2006 to show his opposition to the coup. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/politics/2184319/car-mob-rallies-against-tanks-troops-and-prayut

That is precisely the problem. They keep coming up with these harebrained schemes, none of which have worked - no surprise to me. I can hardly wait to see what their next scheme will be, especially since their announcement that Thailand won't be opening in October after all, along with the restaurant restrictions that so far are going to be imposed in October - none of which make any sense to me. For the entire month of September the restaurants have been open to anyone who wants to dine in - with no restrictions about vaccinations or anything else. As far as I know, not a single Covid case has been traced back to any restaurants at all anywhere in Thailand since they finally were allowed to reopen. Why all that is supposed to change in October goes beyond me. And don't forget the latest scheme designed to attract very wealthy foreigners. I can't imagine that working either. If they get any such foreigners coming to live in Thailand on that basis, I will be surprised In my opinion, no matter what kind of schemes they come up with, not one of them will have a chance of working. I believe the only thing that has a chance of working is opening Thailand, stop unnecessary restaurant restrictions, and let the bars and entertainment venues reopen. I think they also need to get rid of this nonsense about trying to recreate Pattaya to become a "family oriented" holiday spot. WHY? That is not what Pattaya is all about, has never been what Pattaya is all about, and the bars and nightlife is what attracts foreigners. If they want an influx of foreigners, do they really believe a "G" rated city is going to do it? What planet are they living on? How many reading this would go to Pattaya if what is on offer only consists of things like tours of Big Buddha Hill and the Pattaya Sheep Farm. Yeah, right. They need to let Pattaya become what it has always been - without prudes involved in making the decisions. I have yet to see a rational explanation as to why sex is considered something bad. One of my favorites was trying to forbid girls to wear bikinis and boys to take their shirts off during the main Songkran water splashing day. Again, WHY? What was the harm in that? I'm sorry if I am coming across as angry, but I am angry - at the stupidity of it all. If sex and the enjoyment of it is truly bad, then I intend to be bad until the day I die . . .

From Phuket News Expat Phi Phi GM found dead PHUKET: Search teams on Phi Phi Island found the body of Florian Hallermann, the 56-year-old General Manager of the Zeavola Resort, yesterday (Sept 15). The discovery came after a days-long search involving more than 50 people after Mr Hallermann failed to return to the resort last Saturday (Sept 11). Mr Hallermann’s body was found about 200 metres from a path leading over the hills in the centre of the island, on a steep slope overlooking Ao Plaew (Flame Bay), reports state news agency TNA. The cause of death is still unknown, the agency reported. Mr Hallermann’s body has been recovered from the remote site and officers are in the process of investigating his death, the agency report added. https://www.thephuketnews.com/expat-phi-phi-gm-found-dead-81420.php

You have a good heart !!! it would be even nicer if all of us could meet together at the same time !!!

I drifted away from the Forum for a few days and returned to find this thread with comments from so many Thai traveler colleagues. I'll also buy drinks for VInapu, Spoon, Reader, Numazu, Paul SF, aandy, DIvinemadman, and a few more...miss yseeing you guys in Thailand. Onward to the future and returning.

Call Ezekiel on whatsapp. He can get you guys in punta cana like manny does in Santo domingo

Photo by Malay Mail From Thai Enquirer Malaysian transgender icon Muhammad Sajjad Kamaruz Zaman, better known as Nur Sajat, was reportedly arrested in Bangkok and out on bail, local reports said on Monday. Nur Sajat has been on the run from Malaysian authorities since February this year after she was charged by religious high courts for violating the country’s Shariah Laws by dressing up as a woman. Nur Sajat said that she also faced death threats in her native Malaysia after announcing that she would be leaving Islam. She was reportedly arrested in Bangkok on September 8 and is out on bail, according to Malaysia’s The Star Newspaper. The Star is also reporting that she is waiting to be resettled in a third country having applied for and being granted refugee status with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She is reportedly waiting to be processed and resettled in Australia. Nur Sajat is known in Malaysia as a cosmetics entrepreneur. Thai police told Thai Enquirer on Monday that they could not respond to queries about the case as it was a sensitive international matter. It is believed that the Malaysian government are currently requesting her repatriation so that she could stand trial in a religious court where she could be jailed up to three years. https://www.thaienquirer.com/32906/malaysian-transgender-icon-on-the-run-from-shariah-law-reportedly-arrested-in-bangkok/