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From Bangkok Post he Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Digital Government Development Agency are developing a new system to replace the certificate of entry (CoE) for Thais and foreigners who wish to enter the country through an airport. Tanee Sangrat, spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, said on Thursday a new web-based application called the Thailand Pass system, where people can gather information and upload documents, is being developed for the kingdom's Nov 1 reopening. Mr Tanee said the Thailand Pass will replace the CoE system and facilitate the filing of an immigration form known as the TM6 and a health declaration form known as T8. However, the CoEs are still required for certain groups of people, including those who wish to enter the country via land or sea, he said. As for vaccination certification, certificates will be approved online by the Department of Communicable Disease Control under the Public Health Ministry, he said. According to Mr Tanee, his ministry has approved more than 400,000 CoEs for Thai and foreign nationals so far. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2197899/thailand-pass-set-to-replace-coe

Considered the Oscars of Fine Dining, the World's 50 Best Restaurant List has been announced. I know many take these lists with a large pinch of salt, but this one does seem to be especially valid. (Actually the list is not truly the best of the best since some which previously came top of the list have been withdrawn and will be included in a new Best of the Best list). The top two restaurants are both in Copenhagen. The others are spread around many countries. In Asia, the best is Singapore's Odette, one of two from the city state. Two places lower sees a Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong's Soho district, The Chairman, which is the highest climber from the last list. Tokyo has three and Shanghai one. Bangkok has one run by German twins, Suhring in Yen Akat Soi 3 (not far from Sathorn). Suhring has set menus at 3,500 baht and 5,000 baht. But then you have to add in wines, tax and service. There is a very extensive wine list consisting mostly of German wines and few bottles under 2,000 baht. There is however a decent list of a dozen wines by the glass. It's all naturally expensive. There are other considerably less expensive restaurants that i believe offer better value. But for those with cash to splash, Suhring might be worth a try. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-50-best-restaurants-2021/index.html https://restaurantsuhring.com

I recommend that they read both the Post and Enquirer reports in addition to the announcement and then decide on their own. Or maybe we could just debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

For international travellers to Colombia, you need to activate the CoronApp on your phone when you present yourself at customs for entry to the country. This is a formality as well for all flights within the country, asking you a series of Covid-19 symptom-related questions. That survey generates a QR code to be shown at flight check-in and customs. Is gay nightlife back to normal? Sort of. There are many businesses and clubs that have re-opened, however you will find many smaller businesses have changed their format to reflect a post-pandemic reality. Vaccination rates in Colombia are still relatively low, which reflects the limited public health access many Colombians deal with. You will find that the major clubs (Theatron in Bogota, Gigolo Show Bar in Bogota, Industry in Medellin, City Club in Cartagena, etc.) have all resumed regular business hours. Most of the saunas and massage services are also back to normal as well.

The CCSA were meeting today and it was expected that they would announce more of the ten countries but they didn't, so we have to sit back and await their decisions.

#17 on this list- Casa de Porco now has a waitlist well into next year...they said since this list came out, their bookings went insane. Glad I've gotten to eat there a few times before....

The PM Thursday affirmed that Nov. 1 would be the reopening date for tourists from five countries to visit Thailand without quarantine but was silent on other issues many were hoping would be cleared up after the meeting of the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration at Government House. As reported a few days ago, the countries are Britain, the United States, Germany, Singapore and China. There had been talk about five additional countries but none were announced. It was also unclear if the covid test on arrival would be administered at the airport or another location. No mention of other requirements such as COE or insurance were released. Also disclosed was that Thailand will reduce the duration of the nightly curfew and allow more provinces to welcome fully vaccinated visitors, with more businesses reopening, ahead of the November reopening. The CCSA agreed to shorten the curfew from 10 pm – 4 am to 11 pm – 3 am starting from October 16 for at least 15 days. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2197799/quarantine-being-lifted-more-provinces-being-opened https://www.thaienquirer.com/33954/covid-measures-eased-further-ahead-of-thailands-reopening/

A quick search on the forum, this sauna/community center for gay has been mentioned, although not on a specific thread like this one. Seems like it is more than just a sauna, as they also offer counselling for the gay community on chem sex as well.

thanks. I just saw reference on a cute Thai boy's Twitter from his recent visit. I guess it's run by people who also run a massage shop in Ari

Has anyone heard what the ten countries are? is Canada on the Angel List?

“And the friendliest red.” LOL

One more...looks like it's been around awhile. https://thailandeventguide.com/blog/2020/10/14/krubb-bangkok-thai-lgbtq/

You might be interested in a little experiment I just did. I basically tried to recreate my own experience on Grindr in Medellin but with a gay twink account. The only difference was that I didn't initiate chats. But this wouldn't account to many views. I still clicked on all the profiles I liked and let the computer run for 24 hours. Where got far into the 500 views, 25% messages and taps in 24 hours on my own account, this passive twink only got 136 views and 15% messages of which most were taps. That is a very big difference. Even though this isn't an exact science, it does prove to me that the "slim gay twinkies" are far less popular than in many European countries that I know of.

You're right, rooms at Crowne Plaza Lumpini Park are not as big as at The Raya. When I last stayed there (at Crowne), I had no problems bringing a guest to my room

I suppose we tend to place most great writers, poets, composers and others who have handed down to us works of great beauty on a kind of pedestal. We think of them more for their traditional works than themselves as people and conveniently forget about any less savoury works they may have penned. Anyone who has seen the play or the movie "Amadeus" by Peter Schaffer will know that our ideal of Mozart as a precious, intelligent and delicate composer of some of the most divine and gorgeous music ever written is quite wrong. He was a man with youthful desires and frequently mixed with common folk. Amongst the works he has left for posterity is a series of six pornographic canons (a canon being a work where a short melody will eventually be repeated by a series of other voices). The best known is this one which best translates as "Lick my Ass". A similar one starts "Lick My Ass Nicely, Lick it Nice and Clean". In another, the last four lines in the expurgated edition are "Very gently, sleep resting well, Good night! Have sweet dreams, Until the morning breaks!" The text that Mozart wrote is actually "Good night, good night, Shit in your bed and make it burst; Good night, sleep tight, And stick your ass to your mouth." More scatalogical and certainly not outright pornographic as is Auden's poem, but then the times were very different. When then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saw "Amadeus" at the National Theatre, she was not happy at its depiction of Mozart. She said to the director. Peter Hall, "In her best headmistress style, she gave me a severe wigging for putting on a play that depicted Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words. It was inconceivable, she said, that a man who wrote such exquisite and elegant music could be so foul-mouthed. I said that Mozart's letters proved he was just that: he had an extraordinarily infantile sense of humour ... "I don't think you heard what I said", replied the Prime Minister. "He couldn't have been like that". That was the end of any discussion.

I am singling out for comment these items from that article. The avert site below dated 7 August 2020 confirms that the number of new infections of HIV among the general population is indeed declining in Thailand. That figure is impressive - a fall of 59% between 2010 and 2018. This represents the steepest decline in the Asia Pacific region. Sadly, though, it reconfirms that the number of MSM already infected with HIV in Bangkok is 29% whereas it is between 12% and 15% in the country as a whole. But, and I believe this is important, those figures come from two different time periods. The country as a whole is from 2018; that for MSM in Bangkok from 2015. The Bangkok figures has constantly been repeated on all manner of sites ever since then, including this one. Has there really been no change in the number since then? As referred to below, the number seems to have increased, albeit only slightly. Some years ago, another sad statistic was the much higher increase in the rate of HIV infections among young people in the 18-21 age range. Equally, condom use in this age group is low, despite the launch in 2016 of a three year programme to increase condom awareness and to issue 40 million free condoms annually amongst this age group. Part of the reason may be that while sex eduction courses in schools are now common, 'sensitive' subjects like abortion and MSM are often omitted from that part of the curriculum. The site points out that in 2016 only 45% of youngsters in the 15-24 age grouping had "adequate knowledge" of how to prevent HIV. Almost certainly as a result new sexually transmitted infections continue to rise in this group. This seems to be borne out by comments in gay forums about the lack of condom use in the gay saunas primarily targeted at Thais on the outskirts of the Bangkok. Avert suggests that more testing and more education is vital to bring the numbers down. A more detailed site hivhub titled "Thailand Ending AIDS" is dated 2018 and covers the period 1 October 2016 to 30 September 2017. It relates to what was then the current situation and how Thailand could meet its target of ending AIDS by 2030. This states the rate of HIV amongst MSM in Bangkok as slightly higher at 30.2%. This report stresses a number of issues relating to how figures are poorly collated between several agencies, the need for a much larger outreach programme for young people, and the need for many more at risk people to be tested, especially MSM, which happens to be the lowest level for testing and finding out the result (only 54.6%). It adds that many Thais are having their first sexual experiences at an earlier age. 3% claimed to have started at age 13. Although this number is relatively small, it adds that the number of those having sex under 15 is increasing. I apologise that this post veers off the main topic about blood transfusions. In general I agree that the overall situation in Thailand, particularly as outlined in the two reports below, remains too uncertain. I don't mind not being able to donate blood. I donate to the Red Cross instead. That means I am still doing something. Others will certainly disagree with my view. https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/asia-pacific/thailand https://hivhub.ddc.moph.go.th/Download/Report/APR/2018/EN_GAM 2018.pdf

Using an airline membership perks, I found a quite attractive deal ("a vacation package") and I was so close to hit the button "Submit the purchase". The whole package will cost me way less than buying air ticket and a hotel room separately. The package I was about to choose included a room at Crowne Plaza Lumpini park. According to the hotel's site, their rooms dont seem to be as spacious as Raya's, but if I remember correctly from the forum posts here, it has no issue with joiner/visitor. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) LOS could give me a dopamine rush even at its pre preparation stage.

I gave up looking at flights from Western Australia, when I did look we had gone from a direct 7hr well priced flight up to ultra ridiculous 2 stop 22hr plus flights and at exorbitant prices. I did notice on Singapore Air that they did have more expensive prices for April onwards with just the one short transit at Changi but they may be old fares that haven't been adjusted in a long time. Hopefully by June or July things will have settled down a bit and I can book for a Bangkok return with no quarantine, 2 weeks of throwing myself at the mercy of the guys there.

Christianity in Asia has been alive - and mostly well - since the early 16th century. When the Spanish conquered The Philippines, Catholic missionaries were not far behind. The Portuguese had earlier established settlements in Goa and Malacca. Arriving in the tiny enclave of Macau. they negotiated with the Chinese Emperor to be allowed a trading post. They were given a lease on the small enclave of Macao, a lease that continued till 1999. Using Macao as a base, the diocese of Macao spread far and wide to Japan, Vietnam and perhaps surprisingly China itself. Unlike most of the colonial traders, the missionaries took their job very seriously. They learned the languages of the countries and sought souls for God by showing the indigenous populations the errors of their heathen ways. Chiang Kai Shek's extremely powerful wife came from the very Catholic Soong family. To marry her, Chiang had to convert to Catholicism but rarely followed its commandments! That the Soongs were Christian goes back to a Jesuit priest named Matteo Ricci. Based in Macao, he was the first westerner ever allowed to enter Beijing's Forbidden City in 1601. The Emperor created him an adviser because he wanted Ricci's knowledge of astronomy and the sciences. He had already learned how to speak, read and write classical Chinese. While at Court and on his earlier travels around the country he had several major Christian converts. If a foreigner died in China, Court rules insisted his remains had to be transferred back to Macao. In Ricci's case, the Emperor agreed to his being buried in Beijing. With Chiang and his wife being Catholics, no doubt some of the 2 million who followed them to Taiwan were also Christian. Some were also Christian missionaries. These formed the basis of Chiang's Kuomintang political Party. Studies show that even with the island's small number of Christians, that number continues to diminish today. Perhaps one reason is that the majority Protestant religion (twice as many as the number of Catholics), which was introduced to the island by Dutch colonisers during their brief rule in the 17th century, continues to ban the deep rooted cultural significance of ancestor worship. Inevitably, this severlaly limits the numbers prepared to join that branch of the Church.

I think a good bit of South Korea's conservatism stems from the prevalence of evangelical Christianity there. I believe there were lots of missionaries who went there after the war. I haven't ever noticed much Christianity in my visits to Taiwan but those have been quite short visits. Politically they seem to be a good bit less conservative than the Koreans, although getting to gay marriage wasn't easy.

It is well known that consumption of alcohol is a major contribution of spreading the Covid 19.lol.

Growing up very religious, I can understand the need of a desire to praise God. I use to thank him for every good grade I made, every college I got into, and every good person I met in my life. I'm not religious today. However, I still pray every night. I had surgery this week and I prayed 100 times before I went under. It is just a part of who I am. Like Lin, I thought I would be a missionary when I finished college. That wasn't in the cards for me. I think that if back then the church had been more open about homosexuality, then it probably would've been more of a possibility. However, knowing that most of the church hated me, stopped me from having any desire to participate in any organized religion. I grew away from all of that years ago. I have many Taiwanese friends. Most are fairly religious. I did not realize that their Country had so many religious people until I started hanging out with them. I do wonder what brings that on. I wonder if living on an island that is in constant fear I have been attacked from the big bad wolf makes them more religious. It's kind a like my surgery. I was really good and prayers this week. Well, porn and prayers. I guess the two don't go together. Unless you have seen the Mormon videos. They are quite fabulous. There are quite a few of them that I really enjoyed. I often do wonder if the older I get the more religious I will become. My mother was not religious at all. I think she gave up on religion when they told her that she would go to hell if she did not get a divorce from her third husband and marry her second husband who was abusive. She never went to church. She got cancer in her early 50s. All of my family wanted her to get baptized and go to heaven. That's what they believed. She did not want that at all. On her deathbed, they were begging her to get baptized. She declined. She lead a good life. She was not interested in a quick fix at the end of it. I always love that about her. I was also very saddened that my aunts and uncles we're so intent I'm trying to change her at the very end with a guilt complex