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From Pride Bar website today Telephone Pub in Bangkok to rebrand as CIRCUS As the world recovers from Covid-19 LGBTQ venues and the Entertainment industry has suffered greatly. Unfortunately, one of the recent victims is the famous Telephone Pub in Silom Soi 4 Bangkok Thailand. Well known and loved by many over more then 34 years it was unable to reopen after the recent Covid related lockdowns in Thailand. Many of us have very fond memories of Telephone Pub. Some of us meet our friends and partners at this amazing venue. Telephone Pub became possibly one of the most famous in the LGBTQ community and friends. The team at Pride Management and Pride Bar and Restaurant have now taken over the venue in order to keep the location LGBTQ owned and operated. Unfortunately, as part of that arrangement the name was not able to be continued. The team at Pride Management who own Pride Bar and Restaurant are already well known for a LGBTQ Resort in Phuket. Most recently Pride Bar and Restaurant in Silom Soi 4 has been very successful and has been a strong support of the local community during the Covid pandemic that has seen many businesses closed. It was important to reopen as soon as possible to provide the local community with jobs and income so they too can recover from this difficult time. Khun Tai the manager from Telephone Pub will continue as an employee of the venue and we are very grateful for all his support. Past staff of Telephone Pub have now been invited back to work for Pride Management. While some are devastated by the loss of the name others feel that the time to refresh modernize and attract the next generation of customers has now come. Pride Management is pleased to announce that the new name has been chosen as “CIRCUS” and will show a fun modern exciting upgrade to this iconic location. The idea to come join the Circus and get away from the troubles from the last few years of this Covid 19 Pandemic and get the show back on the road. As many of us know change is inevitable. The local community has banded together to do all we can to revitalize and reopen Silom Soi 4 to be ready to welcome back tourists and locals in the coming weeks. With travel now becoming possible again the local community has seen many come back to support the local community and reconnect with friends that we have not seen for too long. We look forward to welcoming you to “CIRCUS “soon and the grand opening is due sometime in December 2021. https://pridethailand.com/news/telephonepub

In Looking for hotels for January, I booked something for the 1st night on Agoda and messaged the Venue to check rates for subsequent nights and they responded with this, which makes me feel better about going: Hi Robert. We are now a SHA Plus+ certified hotel and can be used for your first (and subsequent) night's stay. We are still waiting for the testing details from our partner hospital before we can finalise our package price. We hope to have this within the next couple of days. I will send this info to you as soon as we have it. We will always match or beat any price for staying with us that you are able to obtain elsewhere. When we receive the hospital partner details I will email you with the first night price and the price for subsequent nights. In Pattaya I like the Venue, Classroom Hotel, Ambiance and Agate.....I've stayed at a few others but these are the ones I'd return to.

4 weekends of a big music festival on Pattaya beach, and fireworks celebration at the end of November and full on Loy Kratong, but no bars allowed to open??? Insanity reigns. Sigh.

very good point, it's why I mentioned fairy tales above. 30$ hotel can afford some deficiencies / better not/ but 300$ one must work like well oiled machinery inside and in front of it No to mention fact that quailty destinations are often too sterile and boring after day or two. We love Pattaya not because dirty beaches but despite of it !

Pete Buttigieg Comes Across Like A Tin Man The new Pete Buttigieg documentary reveals a gifted politician struggling with how much to reveal of himself. Two and a half years after his run for president, Pete Buttigieg has managed to hold America’s attention and fascination. | Courtesy of Amazon Studios By RUBY CRAMER 11/08/2021 12:35 PM EST Ruby Cramer is a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine. The first voice you hear, somewhere off-camera, belongs to Jesse Moss, the filmmaker. “Anything you want to make sure that I ask him?” By this point, Moss has spent 11 months with his subject, filming him backstage at events, in his home, in his car, at the airport, in every session of debate prep he held with his campaign advisers. But as the new documentary “Mayor Pete” opens, the director is asking for help. The person seated across from Moss is not Pete Buttigieg, but his husband. Chasten, holding the couple’s one-eyed puggle upright in his lap, tells Moss to ask Buttigieg about his identity. “He did everything to climb every ladder without being his authentic self,” he says. Buttigieg didn’t come out of the closet until 2015, when he was 33, already mayor. “You spent so much of your life hiding who you really were — did you feel like you were able to be your true self on the campaign trail?” “Do you think he’s ready to answer that question?” Moss asks. “Can he answer that?” “He should. You can try.” Buttigieg walks in the room. Before he leaves, Chasten turns to his husband. “Don’t bull---- us, Peter,” he says. Two and a half years after his run for president, Buttigieg has managed to hold America’s attention and fascination. Roads and bridges have apparently never been so interesting. The beat-like coverage of his arrival in Washington this year — of his new kids, his aides, his role in the Biden administration, his presumed future presidential run(s) — is not typically commensurate with the job title of transportation secretary. Now a feature film by Moss, director of the 2020 film “Boys State,” aims to fill the lingering curiosity gap about a candidate who has shaped his own unexpected political identity, first in South Bend, Ind., and now in Washington. But peeling back the layers, Moss found, could feel like an impossibly frustrating task. The proposition he interrogates in the film, built on cinéma vérité-style footage from inside the 2020 campaign, is that when it comes to Buttigieg, what you see is what you get. In one sense, this is proven true. For 96 minutes, in scenes ranging from public events to the privacy of his own home, there is Pete, acting like Pete: reserved and calm, a sweet husband, a nerd (“Did someone say pivot table!?” he asks in one scene, exuberant at the chance to help format an Excel spreadsheet), an introvert. He does not, by his own admission, have the “gregarious charisma” of Bill Clinton. You can sense there is constant activity happening, not on screen, but somewhere inside his head, far off and out of reach. At points, Moss says, he felt confounded by his own subject, turning to Chasten to bring Buttigieg emotionally within arm’s length. “I was very stymied by that,” Moss told me ahead of the film’s release this Friday. “There were moments where I threw up my hands in frustration and despair.” The beat-like coverage of Pete Buttigieg's arrival in Washington this year is not typically commensurate with the job title of transportation secretary. | Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video And that’s the underside of Moss’s premise, the dilemma in his film on constant display: It’s not exactly that Buttigieg is “bull----ing” us, as Chasten says in the first scene, or even that what you see is not, in fact, what you get. It’s the feeling of an inaccessible interior — of watching a person who is still becoming comfortable with himself and doing so on the biggest stage imaginable. The real drama that unfolds on screen is not about the ups and downs of a campaign, or even Buttigieg’s political prospects, though he states plainly in the film’s final scene that he could run again: “Time is on my side.” What you see instead is more basic: a story about personal identity in politics — a man, then 37, a presidential candidate, a breakout star, now the most prominent member of President Biden’s cabinet, who at every turn was unsure of how, or exactly how much, to share himself with the world. Always, he erred on the side of less rather than more. Always, it was against the urging of his own husband and campaign team. The sharpest moments of tension come when Chasten and campaign aides push Buttigieg to open up, including about his identity as a gay man. In one subtly heartbreaking scene, Chasten is in their Des Moines hotel room, watching live coverage of the Iowa caucus returns. Bernie Sanders is on TV, speaking on stage surrounded by his wife and family, when Chasten says from the couch, “You’re gonna be the only candidate that didn’t have your spouse standing next to you.” Buttigieg doesn’t really respond. In a seated interview for the film, Chasten recalls the early days of their relationship. “I would say, ‘What’s going on in that head of yours?’ And he’s grown a lot, being able to verbalize. I think he’s learned to allow personal narrative to have more impact,” he tells Moss. “Opening up.” In debate prep sessions, when Buttigieg rehearses his response to a police shooting of a Black man in South Bend, his senior adviser Lis Smith says, “He’s comin’ across like the f---ing tin man up there.” When he talks about his experiences as a gay man, she tells him it’s like he is “reading a f---ing shopping list,” she says. “You’re not, like, f---ing, an anthropologist here.” “This is, like, a thing that you feel,” she says, as if literally reminding him. It was only late into the project that Moss discovered he was watching a candidate’s “journey” to express himself in a more fundamental rather than political way. That journey is the invisible framework of the film, and you have to look carefully for signs of the scaffolding as the camera tracks Buttigieg moving swiftly through the benchmarks of a national campaign, from his launch in April 2019, to his rise via CNN town halls and debates, to the night he wins the Iowa caucus and, just four weeks later, stares down the reality that “the numbers” are “just not there” with Black voters. But what Moss does manage to reveal between the action tells us more about the man himself, and his limits. “Sometimes people who participate in documentaries don’t fully consciously know why they do it,” Moss told me. “There is a complicated relationship that is formed with the filmmaker, and there's a need that you fulfill. “The film may have functioned as a part of that self-questioning. It may have been wrapped up in what Chasten recognized to be the larger project that Pete was on — to open up.” The first time I met Buttigieg was at a Sheraton in Phoenix in January 2017. He was still mayor of South Bend, a city of 100,000, a new entry in the race to become chair of the Democratic National Committee, his first introduction to the national stage. As an aide led me up to his suite, she told me he was “the next John F. Kennedy.” MOST READ ‘He’s Comin’ Across Like the F---ing Tin Man Up There’This being a DNC candidate forum, an unglamorous and musty affair, it was quite the claim. Inside the room, I asked Buttigieg about how he wanted to lead the party, and he quickly steered us into a conversation about what it means to lead a city with “values” — specifically, he said, the values of trash pickup services. "The values of trash pickup?" I said. “Yeah. It’s connected to the meaning of life, in the sense that whatever the meaning life is —” "Trash pickup?" "Yeah,” he said, “because what's the meaning of life for you?" I stammered. “Whatever it is, whether it’s your professional growth, or faith and family, or you’re building a business, you will not be able to meet that life of your choosing if there’s not clean, safe drinking water for you, or a road to get you where you’re going — or if the trash isn’t getting picked up.” Buttigieg, a skilled narrator, is President Biden’s most prominent messenger, on the Sunday shows nearly every weekend. | Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video Buttigieg could do that, even back then — turning a mundane question into a larger-than-life answer. He could sell his record in South Bend as a national model. His view of politics was philosophical, esoteric. He presented voters with a view of one era bleeding into the next — the New Deal era lasted for 50 years, he’d tell voters, then came the Reagan era, and he wanted to define the era that came next. As transportation secretary, he is President Biden’s most prominent messenger, on the Sunday shows nearly every weekend, talking up the infrastructure bill that will finally become law after a vote late Friday. In policy and politics, he is a skilled narrator. The film “Mayor Pete” documents the way his personal narrative, on the other hand, boiled down in the Democratic primary to a collection of outré biographical data points that delighted reporters at every turn: Maltese American, left-handed, gay, war veteran, Episcopalian, mayor, millennial, fluent in eight languages (including Norwegian), reads French poetry, loves James Joyce, prefers blue Paper Mate Flair Felt Tip Pens (medium point, 0.7mm), played a minor role in a possible bread price-fixing scandal in Canada and so on. “People want to fix you onto a spectrum and find a box to put you in,” Buttigieg once told me before he ran for president. “I spent Thanksgiving in a deer blind with my boyfriend’s father. Identity buckets aren’t comfortable places for me to be in.” Buttigieg had only just launched his exploratory committee when Moss, still editing “Boys State,” approached the campaign, then just a team of a few people. His producer had pitched the idea. Buttigieg was interested. Moss was skeptical. “I said no, actually,” he says. “It sucks to cover campaigns.” After watching Buttigieg on a CNN town hall, an appearance that helped incite “the overall fascination with Pete,” Moss told me, he reconsidered. “I said, ‘Well, if the access is really there, and Pete’s really willing to give it, even though he’s not going to go far and this might be a foolhardy effort, I'll just go out and start filming, and we'll see how it feels.” As he trailed the campaign in 2019, Moss found that although his film crew of one had access no other journalist enjoyed — to his campaign headquarters, his marriage, his living room in South Bend — Buttigieg could present an inaccessible front. The first time they met was on a train to Washington, D.C. Moss introduced himself. “I’m like, ‘I’m Jesse.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m Pete.’ And then he was back to work. I sat down on the empty seat next to him and waited for the small talk to begin, and it didn’t.” He stayed for “two awkward minutes,” he says, and then returned to his seat. “A very awkward first day.” Weeks later, Moss remembers filming him from the passenger seat of a car. Buttigieg was in the back, reading or dialed into a call, Moss watching his face. “It was placid. I wouldn’t say blank — that’s not the right word — but it was impenetrable,” he says. “And yet I found it fascinating because I thought, what is going on? He’s juggling a lot of balls in the air here. He's obviously containing a lot — emotionally and intellectually and tactically — and all of that was concentrated right there in his face for me.” “There’s an experimental version of the film, which is just him thinking,” he laughs. “But that’s also not great dramatic storytelling, right? He is so restrained. He’s a difficult, dramatic protagonist. In some ways, he's so comfortable in front of the camera, at least in certain environments. And yet, he wasn’t uncomfortable privately. But he was not revealing.” Moss’s wife and filmmaking partner, Amanda McBaine, advised him at some point “to get Pete drunk or something.” Buttigieg rationalizes his restraint in his own words, late in the film, quoting a poem by Carl Sandburg, written from the perspective of a father giving advice to his son: “It says, ‘Tell himself no lies about himself / whatever the white lies and protective fronts / he may use amongst other people.” Everybody “has thought about that,” Buttigieg tells Moss. “What’s the difference between the faces the world makes you put forward and your shifting understanding of who you actually are?” At points, filmmaker Jesse Moss says, he felt confounded by his own subject, turning to Chasten to bring Buttigieg emotionally within arm’s length. | Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video Moss learned to rely on Chasten. Really, the two colluded in the project. At one point, Moss is trying to interview Buttigieg — “and I could see he was slipping into this mode of like, ‘I'm talking to any reporter,’ and it’s just unusable.” So he asks Chasten to step in as the questioner. “I've never done that before with a documentary interview, and it felt a little transgressive, but we immediately got more interesting. I thought, ‘My God, now I'm filming them talking about this campaign together.’” Chasten sits down at their dining room table, behind a portrait of Kennedy propped up on a small piano. “How do you know how to do what you’re doing?” he asks his husband. Buttigieg, in particular, laments what he calls the “gamification” of politics, but it’s Chasten who is constantly pushing up against what he feels are the boundaries of the campaign. When he wants to start telling audiences about the couple’s difficulty having kids — “it’s something very real and felt by a lot of people” — a staffer tells him it’s a bit too intimate to bring up publicly. The two briefly debate the question before the staffer says, “If you want to make it a part of ‘the narrative,’ we can have that conversation.” Moss believes he wouldn’t have been able to make the film with just Buttigieg. “You couldn’t,” he says. “I think that I was really struggling. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t make a film.’ Chasten allowed me to kind of short circuit what would normally either be impossible or take forever.” You do see intimate moments in “Mayor Pete”: In March 2020, after dropping out of the race, you watch him return from the campaign trail, changing into sweatpants and slippers before taking calls from President Obama and Joe Biden. At home, he does laundry, brews Keurig, types on his iPad, wrestles with his dogs on the floor, takes Chasten on a “date night” to Dairy Queen (“Can we eat the ice cream before the chicken gets here?” he asks), plays dominoes with his family and works at the mayor’s office in South Bend. “Oh, Mr. Bill, Mr. Regular Bill, sitting here, on the mayor’s desk,” he hums in a singsong voice to a stack of paper, chipper as he signs each page with his fine blue marker. “This is how a bill becomes law!” he declares when an aide walks in. “Mhm,” she says, walking out. There are notable absences in the film, too. Moss documents Buttigieg’s struggle with the police shooting of Eric Logan, a Black man in South Bend, but the film leaves out the tensions over race and inclusion that divided his own campaign staff. (Rather, Moss presents the operation as a small, home-grown family, where aides are expected to “be really, really kind,” as campaign manager Mike Schmuhl tells staff early in the film.) You also don’t hear Buttigieg talk about his father, who died just before his campaign launch, around the same time Moss began filming. Buttigieg didn’t discuss his grief on the campaign trail, and he doesn’t in the film. Moss says he didn’t want to overload the documentary with too much early biography. “My way of coming at the world, the stronger the emotion is, the more private it is,” Buttigieg says. “And it is a strange thing, because politics is an emotional pursuit, of course.” Chasten’s question for his husband — were you able to “be your true self on the campaign trail?” — is at the center of every run for office, and of every documentary that tries to reveal the harrowing gauntlet that is American presidential politics. “Journeys With George,” Alexandra Pelosi’s home-movie-style film about her time embedded with the 2000 Bush campaign, shows the candidate as viewed from inside “the bubble” — a daily, rote exercise in following him from one place to the next. As reporters slip and slide across a frozen tarmac in Iowa, waiting to watch the candidate arrive, Houston Chronicle reporter R.G. Ratcliffe yells over the drone of jet engines, “This is insane! The only reason we’re out here is in case Bush comes out, slips on the ice and falls down — because we’re vicious predators.” A more recent political documentary series, “Hillary,” shows a candidate looking on from the other side of the bubble: “I am a private person, but I think it’s important to be a private person if you’re in public arena,” Clinton tells filmmakers, “because the crushing intensity of total wall-to-wall coverage, the expectation that you share your innermost feelings with people — is there anything left if you’ve basically lived everything out in public?” “Mayor Pete” presents viewers with something in between. The audience is neither on the outside looking in, nor fully inside. If Buttigieg was able to be his “true self” on the campaign trail, or in the documentary project he invited into his home for a year, the question is left open by Moss. “I'm always interested in the faces we put forward to the public and then the private self,” Moss says. “It does articulate to me a central question of Pete’s journey through the campaign and his own growth. It’s the question every candidate goes through. For Pete that has particular meaning, because he’s a gay man.” Now a father to twins, Buttigieg has not participated in the promotion of the film. The only staff member interviewed in the documentary, the campaign manager, Mike Schmuhl, declined to discuss the project, too. Moss did share a rough cut of the movie with Buttigieg and Chasten earlier this year. They both watched it. Buttigieg only offered one piece of feedback: Why wasn't there more policy? “It may just be that they’re processing. It’s sort of hard to see past their own lived experience to what the film represents,” Moss says. “Mayor Pete” is less of a political document than films like “Mitt” or “War Room.” Moss says he’s enjoyed referring to it as “a love story.” | Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video “Mayor Pete” is less of a political document than films like “Mitt” or “War Room.” Moss says he’s enjoyed referring to it as “a love story.” By the end of the documentary, we see Pete and Chasten backstage before an event in New Hampshire. He’s just won the Iowa caucus and backstage in a small hold room, when Chasten asks Buttigieg if he would ever say: “To that kid, cracking the door open, wondering if it’s really safe to come out in this country, I say, ‘Look what we can do.’” “I don’t know, maybe,” says Buttigieg, seated at his iPad. When he goes on stage, he gives his own version of the line and chokes up. If you can see Buttigieg’s growth in the film, Moss says, this was it. “I think what they were negotiating, in the relationship, and then on the stage, both together and separately, was how to live as themselves. How much of myself do I offer?” “Are we left with a similar feeling of unrequited knowledge with Donald Trump? Probably not. We probably know everything and more than we need to know. What is it about Pete that creates that sense that there’s something elusive? And is that a valuable thing to have?” Moss, against his own interests as a filmmaker, offers one possible answer. “Maybe we need more political leaders who offer us less of their personal selves.”

From BBC Travel For years, the Moravia neighbourhood of Medellín was the city's rubbish dump. But in recent years, this former landfill has blossomed into a thriving arts and cultural centre. Stroll through Medellín's working-class Moravia neighbourhood on any given morning and you'll see a hawker belting out "aguacates!" through a small loudspeaker while dragging a wooden wagon of gigantic avocados behind him. Scents of deep-fried cheese-and-dough fritters swirl from heated buñuelo displays. Glancing up amid the winding sea of humble brick-and-cement abodes, a grandma hangs her clothes out to dry on a thin wire on her balcony. Amid it all, motorcycles, delivery trucks and stray dogs do a delicate dance while navigating the narrow roads. This multisensory experience may not seem entirely out of place elsewhere in Colombia, but it was unfathomable here just years ago. That's because, not only was Medellín dogged by its reputation as the world's unofficial "murder capital" for years, but Moravia once had a particularly undesirable reputation within the city: it was its rubbish dump. Medellín is just three decades removed from its designation as "The Most Dangerous City" in the world by Timemagazine. In 1991, the homicide rate peaked at a world-high of 380 per 100,000 people as the country's drug war oozed into the streets and facets of everyday life. Today, those years appear to be long gone. The homicide rate is roughly one-fifteenth of what it once was, there's a genuine sense of revitalisation in the air and public projects are breathing new life into the city. The Morro de Moravia (Moravia Hill) enlivens the urban landscape of Medellin (Credit: Alcadía de Medellín) A squeaky-clean Metro system now whizzes above ground, cable cars string into hillside barrios, and public escalators wind through the once-unnavigable Comuna 13 neighbourhood. Each of these is not only a picturesque way for visitors to take in the city's skyline and sky-high Andes Mountains vistas, but they also connect those in some of Medellín's poorest and hardest-to-navigate neighbourhoods with the centre city and job opportunities. Medellín's central 'mountain' When viewed from above, beige-and-brick structures dot Medellín's landscape. The northern half of the city is enclosed by mountains, but there is one noticeable green heap in the centre of town just north of the Parque Norte amusement park: the Morro de Moravia (Moravia Hill), which is blanketed in grass, walking paths and gardens and is punctuated with a large greenhouse on top. Yet, walking up the mountain, you're greeted with large signs and historical photos showing what life was once like on this now-serene hill: black-and-white images reveal a vast landscape of dirt, hand-made shanties built from rubbish and locals picking through the city's dumped debris. When the Ferrocarril de Antioquia regional railroad connected Moravia with the surrounding countryside in the 1960s, it brought displaced families forced to relocate to the safer confines of the city. Their once-quiet lives outside Medellín had been made dangerous by right- and left-wing militarists engaging in a partisan war over land and goods. Settling in Moravia – which formed in the early 1900s as a linear settlement bordering the railroad and slowly expanded out from it – was a safer bet. In the 1970s, the city authorised the area to be used as a municipal landfill, which led this slowly new barrio to explode into a mountain of garbage. As a result, a number of the previously displaced families were relocated to the western hills of Medellín. Other families resisted further relocation as the trash began piling up all around them. Of the families that resisted and remained, many operated recycling operations out of their homes to make a living. Continues with photos https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210713-moravia-colombias-unexpected-green-oasis

One of those venerable and long standing BKK gay places- mentioned in any of the 100s of ´gay listings/travelguides´ in print or on www has also bitten in the dust. Its in Silom soi 4 and at the end could not longer survive all the restrictions. Even though I guess about anyone in this forum will also read/follow the other gay-TH forum (often named the ´bitchy one´) were I just read this, I felt it appropriate to also post it here-for the sake of completeness. It has been taken over by the Phuket based Pride concern, and it seems the old manager now works and leads the place for them. Not clear if those old telefones (well, most of you seem to be old enough to remember how these worked and what they were for?!) will be able to find a new place in this circus.

Richard Barrow had an interview with Thai officials that shed light on some much debated issued concerning Thai Pass. Here are some excerpts: "I think the biggest improvement that they will be implementing soon is the ability to log in to check on your application status. Which will also give you the ability to download the QR Code once it has been released." "...there are some (vaccination) certificates that are challenging for them which is why it sometimes takes time. Particularly if someone uploaded an image that is not clear." "Another problem is the “date of arrival”. For many people, there should also be a date of departure as it might take them several days to reach Thailand. This then becomes a problem if their QR Code doesn’t arrive before their first flight. They recognise that as a problem and have noted it. The second problem is that some people might need to move their flight date for some reason. I think most of us thought that to do that we would have to apply again from the start. But that is not so. You can apparently still arrive as long as it is within 72 hours of that date." "...many people asked how far in advance can you apply for a Thailand Pass. Well, the good news is that there is no time limit. If you want to, you can apply now for a holiday to Thailand in say January next year. If you do that now, then you don’t need to worry about the QR Code arriving on time." "... like I have said many times already, don’t rush to come to Thailand. Certainly not during this transition period between the COE and Thailand Pass. But, if you can wait until, say December, then you will find it much easier." "...there will be a big CCSA meeting on Friday that will be reviewing the first two weeks of the reopening of the country and will discuss possible easing of some of the rules. I think next week, we might see the exemption age for vaccination certificates for the Test & Go program will be raised from under 12 to under 18. Another major change we might see next week, is the dropping of the rule to have a RT-PCR test within 72 hours of departure. This is because there is a growing number of countries that don’t actually have an option to have this test done. If it doesn’t happen next week, then I think we should see that happen by 1st December. The other thing they should be discussing is the list of approved countries and territories." ====================== There's additional discussion about the RT-PCR test and other issues of interest and I encourage readers considering a future trip to check out the post in full context at link below. https://www.getrevue.co/profile/richardbarrow/issues/latest-updates-about-the-thailand-pass-849676?via=twitter-card-webview

Soi4 is in Silom in Bangkok.

But then I guess at least 80-90% of those visitors only went to Bali for 1-2 weeks-OZzies and Chinese/Koreans. Of the rest nearly half is probably F&F (visit to family and friend). In fact international tourism had already fallen considerably before covid to other places formerly well known as Yogya or the Bukittingi/Parapat on Sumatera. Riau amazes me-but then I think its mostly a weekend escape for Singys closeby-hence the numbers In fact Bali does have some magnificent hi-class resorts away from the dirt&filth. Were even able to attract loads of famous pop-stars. But due to tradition the beaches cannot be private. Up till now this is very 1st mention of my favorite country to reopen-so Iĺl check what it all means and if it can serve as ALT for Thailand.

Keep the small night club closed but lets do concerts and large events instead....

I'm not inclined to read too much into this until the matter is decided, reportedly on Friday. It appears to be as much about politics as it does public health. If the Dec. 1 reopening phase is actually scaled back, it throws into chaos the plans of many clubs that are now gearing up to open their doors. From Pattaya Mail Thailand to consider keeping bars, clubs closed through New Year The Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration on Friday will consider a proposal to keep Thailand’s bars, nightclubs and other entertainment venues closed through the new year, with Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha admonishing operators not to be “selfish.” Thai media reported today that at the weekly Cabinet meeting, ministers discussed the idea of keeping entertainment businesses, including karaoke clubs and soapy massage parlors, shuttered until 2022 to prevent another major coronavirus outbreak over the holidays. Despite the holiday worries, the Cabinet moved forward with plans for five large regional new year’s “countdown” events. Previously, Prayut had told the nation that the resumption of alcohol sales in restaurants and the reopening of bars would be considered in December. The alcohol ban was lifted in parts or all of Bangkok, Phuket, Krabi and Phangnga provinces when they were designated “blue” tourism zones this month and 17 more blue zones likely will be announced for December. Bars, clubs and parlors appear to be another matter, however. Those who don’t have nefarious connections – such as the many straight-up watering holes on lower Sukhumvit Road and Khao San Road – remain closed. The same is true for nightclubs. Big nightspots in the RCA area or on Soi 11 continue to be shut down while Thai clubs with the aforementioned nefarious connections are back to normal, such as Top One in the Rachada area, which has bottle service, live bands and discos lights going nightly. https://www.pattayamail.com/latestnews/news/thailand-to-consider-keeping-bars-clubs-closed-through-new-year-378789

From Bangkok Post Authorities will set aside up to 500,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines for foreign workers as it prepares to welcome them back to the country to help ease a labour shortage, a government minister said on Wednesday. The government plans to allow workers from neighbouring Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos to re-enter the country beginning next month and fill up shortages in big exporting industries such as food and rubber production. Workers will be placed in a two-week quarantine and during that time the vaccines will be administered, Labour Minister Suchart Chomklin said. They will also be tested for Covid-19. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2213231/govt-offers-covid-19-vaccines-to-migrant-workers

I booked yesterday for a trip in three months time....and I agree with vinapu; we cannot allow our lives to be circumscribed by such possibilities, real as they are. All we can do is to take as many sensible precautions as we can. Every journey we undertake has its risks. My guess is that I shall be in most danger of catastrophe when I drive along the M4 to Heathrow Airport. And then, of course, in the taxi from BKK to Pattaya. All the other dangers, anxieties and possibilities are way down the list. One thing I have done is to spoil myself by booking Business Class on EVA Air, where the seats are partitioned and set well-apart. For those who are interested, the cost was £3400. I won't be able to afford that again!

My guy! Thank you

What's missing from Richard Barrow's stories is whether the featured persons had been vaccinated. Quite possibly the response protocol is differentiated by vaccination status of whoever tests PCT-positive. Also missing is that there is no second PCR-test to check if the first was a false positive??? I have long been concerned that this is the hidden side of Thailand trying to promote tourism. Much of the communication that I have seen stress this part: "If you test PCR-negative on arrival..." and then speaks of sandbox freedoms or reduced quarantine. Missing from the communication is any clarity about the other limb of the "if" statement. If not, then what? It's like a sales pitch for Bog-Sod Airlines. "If we take off on time, load your bags onto the same plane, and our pilot is not inebriated, then we will arrive at Paradise Beach by noon ..."

I think the risks for most of us who take precautions well are not getting covid while on plane, but more of sitting next to someone who's tested positive. Getting the Covid is something we can avoid by having proper precautions but sitting next to one in plane or transportation to hotel is unpredictable and pure luck.

grown up, minister and still believes in fairy tales !

This tweet from Richard Barrow is interesting - the viewpoint of a Bangkok taxi driver on his concern of transmission of Covid from his taxi passengers:

Yes, I noticed that too. Those sites would be a place to start looking for the local talent.

I was in Bogota again a few weeks ago and would like to share a bit about my stay. I didn’t plan on going to Bogota so soon after my last trip to this great city, but a Colombian Chaturbate model living in Baranquilla I had my eye on for a while expressed interest in (1) meeting me for a nice trip somewhere and (2) wanted to check out Bogota as a place he’d like to visit and possibly move to. His terms were simple, (1) pay the flights to BOG from BAQ, plus food and drinks were my responsibility, (2) I were to bring some warm clothes for him to wear, and didn’t care if they were pre-worn. My terms were (1) I could do anything to him and (2) I could hook up with other guys while he was staying with me. We had a deal. Usually the boys just wanted a break from the soul-crushing work of having sex on cam, as well as being stuck in a house full of boys, and it doesn’t take much for them to go on a weekend trip with you. Let’s call the kid Carlos. He is 22, tall with a lean muscular build. His draw online was that he looked younger than 22, had an angelic face, and an enormous penis that was always hard. He would also pair up with off-again, on-again Venezuelan boyfriend, who was 21, strikingly beautiful, and also had a large penis. These two would take turns fucking each other online. They weren’t the highest of earners, like other boys I know, but they were hard workers, and from my extensive Whatsapp conversations with them, pretty humble and simple. I toyed with the idea of inviting Carlos with his boyfriend, but the unstable nature of their relationship made me just want to stick with the more masculine, handsome Carlos. I bought his roundtrip airplane ticket on LATAM for $64 total. I took the red-eye Aviance flight from LAX to BOG direct flight that gets into Bogota at 7 AM. I was going to stay for 3 nights on this long weekend. Some notes: 1. Since I was getting into Bogota early, I had to get a hotel that allowed early check-in. I looked online and looked at some reviews of top hotels that had reviews for early check-in. I settled on the Embassy Suites Hilton, which had reviews of some people being able to check-in early. Sure enough, getting there at 9 AM was no problem. I got a room right away and was able to take a 3 hour nap while I waited for Carlos. 2. I received a call from reception to let me know that Carlos was downstairs. I rushed downstairs to fetch him. Reception asked for his “cedula” and made a copy and added his name in the reservation. No fuss. The hotel itself was OK. Nothing special, but had free breakfast as well as a free happy hour. Carlos and I did not need dinner as the happy hour hors d'oeuvre were enough for the two of us. 3. Our first night was a Thursday and we had fewer options for night life. We opted to try the “El Mozo” gay bar, which had great advertisement for their “College night” on Thursdays. We were impressed by the building and bar, but found the clientele to be a bit bland and music to be just OK, so at 12 midnight we decided to leave and head over to greener pastures. Not much college night about the night. 4. After a cursory search online we decided on just giving up and going to Theatron, on a Thursday. They had this for advertisement (Jueves Hot), so why not give it a try: I really had my heart set on going to Theatron on a Saturday, their big night, but we were itching for some nightlife so off we went. 5. Theatron was different on a Thursday night. No cover, and no line to get in. Just the usual security pat down and ID check. We went through the side entrances and found about 50% of the bars closed. Most of the bars open were the ones in the upper levels. There were fewer people, but the crowd was definitely more fun than in El Mozo. 6. The “men’s only” upper floor at Theatron was actually not men’s only on Thursdays. They allowed women also, and the dancers were not nude when we got there midnight: I thought this was because there were girls that night so the gogo boys were not allowed to be naked. Well when it got to 1 AM, they changed models and the model onstage quickly got rid of his undies to reveal his hard on: At 1 AM, the drink prices changed too. They were charging full price for all the alcohol. It’s probably why the models got naked. More money. 7. We changed hotels the next day, and we were glad we did. I tried the JW Marriott in Bogota and they have specials in the weekends ($130 a night). With status I received free access to the lounge which meant again free breakfast and free happy hour. Again we were able to take advantage of the happy hour hors d'oeuvre selection which was enough for dinner, and the breakfast was a pretty hearty amercan breakfast. 8. Carlos was a frisky one and he was pretty determined to find a good “prepago” or prostitute for both of us to share as soon as we got to our room. A lot of great selections on mileroticos website, the Colombian website for paid boys. Carlos pretty much handled the searching, talking and asking the price. Most were in the 150k to 250k COP range, which was $50 to $80. Some samples: We both agreed upon this blue-eyed stunner who was versatile and agreed to take both of us. Asked for 250k, Carlos bargained him down to 175k ($59) for an hour. Two hours later the boy was at the JW Marriott, and he didn’t have any issues getting to the room with us. Security was tight but didn’t pay us any attention. The boy ended up staying three hours, partly for sex (which was awesome, and threesomes aren’t my favorite, so that was saying something) and partly because Carlos and he hit it off. We all went to happy hour together and the boy loaded up on the free beers. He said goodbye after dinner. Money well spent. 9. We were intending to go to Theatron this Friday night but I wanted to check out the stipper bar “Gigolo Erotic House” first. It was so much fun that we ended up staying the whole night till 3 AM. Cheap booze (whiskey bottle was $30 with cokes and waters) which we shared with the boys. Hot dancers who went around the room looking for tips and lap dances. We noticed some dancers here also were dancers in Theatron. So to answer someone's question, yes, you can hire the Threatron dancers who also work here. You can get a private dance for 50k COP ($17), which was done in the side behind curtains. You can pretty much do anything to the boy during the dance. I did two lap dances when I was there. One was with this guy, and I did pretty much everything, so yummy (photos from their Instagram): The other was with this guy. He was more shy at first but opened up. He was more sweet and liked kissing: Carlos went wild of course. He was making friends, asking for WhatsApp numbers from the boys. He hit it off with this one stripper who was close to his age. The stripper stayed with us for most of the night. Carlos then told me that the stripper could go with us to the hotel for 80k COP ($27). I talked to the stripper for a while and he won me over. He did end up going home with us when the club closed at 3 AM, and actually stayed the night and had breakfast with us at the hotel. No issue with getting him in the hotel either. Threesomes are fun with Carlos. By the way, this bar is the closest to a Bangkok Bar that I’ve ever seen outside of Thailand, because of this: And yes, there was a fuck show, sexo en vivo, at Gigolo Erotic House. It took the whole bar to a whole new level for me. Plus of course the great guys. In some ways it is more fun than a Thailand bar, because the boys were not shy, and they were cheaper, and they were probably more fun. PS. Day 3 was fun as well, and we targeted free boys on Grindr. Lots of free boys in Bogota too. PPS. Carlos ended up moving to Bogota, with boyfriend in tow. I'm glad I brought all those sweaters for Carlos.

Unfortunately we did not ask when we were there last April. Maybe you can have luck contacting Theatron on their Facebook or Instagram? Maybe not ask them if their dancers are hireable per se, but maybe ask them for the model's personal Instagram pages, and then ask the models there. I did ask my guys if any of the strippers were hireable, and both said maybe not. They even remembered one of the dancers not wanting to be touched while dancing, so they said maybe that's a sign. I looked in my camera roll and found some evidence of it: But they told me that they could ask them personally if they were back in Theatron. So maybe you can find a local hire to do some investigation for you while you are there. Since I was looking at my photos of the Theatron strippers anyway, I decided to turn some of the iPhone live photos into GIFS for your pleasure: Enjoy Theatron! Let us know how you get by. I'll be back in Medellin in a few weeks. I'll report my findings.

Sadly my experience in Colombia has been sauna- and rent boys from Grindr-free. All my experience is with Chaturbate models from Day 1. So I do not have any wisdom to share about these establishments, even if I've been to Colombia so many times now. But I wanted to add here my experience in Santa Marta from last weekend. Santa Marta is a one of the major cities along the Colombian Caribbean coastline. Its way less full of western tourists than the more developed Cartagena, but really popular with locals and Venezuelans so you get a different experience. Some points: 1. It was the Festival of the Sea (Fiesta del Mar) in Santa Marta last weekend, and I was there with 2 of my regular Chaturbate buddies (who are boyfriends in real life and on screen), who met me at the Barranquilla airport, which is a good 2 hours from Santa Marta, but has way more flights to it than the smaller Santa Marta airport, therefore it is cheaper to fly into. We Uber'ed it from the airport to the closest bus station, which was with a company called Berlinas. The ticket to Santa Marta was $5 per person, and it was a comfortable 2-hour ride to the Santa Marta Berlinas station: 2. There are two main destinations for beaches in the Santa Marta area. One is Rodadero beach, which is located south of Santa Marta proper, and its probably the less hectic and more picturesque of the main beaches: 3. The main beach is by the Bahia area in Santa Marta, which is busier but noticed more locals than tourists, which is good for window shopping for local eye candy: 4. Since it was super hot and humid almost all the time here (apart from the occasional showers), the boys are also usually sin ropa: 5. Since it is Colombia, you'll also find a lot of entertainers in streets. breakdancing hotties, for example: 6. During the special weekend I was here, there were a lot of parades. One of them was a parade of Marines from various latin american countries (Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru etc), and therefore the town was filled with good looking fit and young marines celebrating with everyone: At night, the main parade, Desfile del Mar, was at least a 7 hour parade that went from the afternoon to night: 7. As far as gay establishments are concerned, I do not know if there are any saunas here. But bear in mind that Santa Marta is just 2 hours from Barranquilla, a city that has at least 5 Chaturbate/Cam 4 studios (that I know of). My model buddies had two best friends, also Chaturbate models, who also made the journey to Santa Marta this weekend as well, to escort. They told me that from time to time, models in Barranquilla usually take the bus to either Cartagena or Santa Marta to take advantage of the presence of the tourists in those cities, in the hopes of scoring some needed cash. They usually charge $25-$40 a session, which will usually pay for a night in their motel and their meals and passage for the day. Multiple customers make the trip worthwhile. At the very least, one customer makes the trip break even for them, so at least they get a trip out of it, instead of being stuck in the more inland Barranquilla. Snagging more customers meant extending their stay and living the beach life. They use Grindr mainly to ply their wares. Since I was with my two Chaturbate buddies (who are territorial and don't share me with anyone), I could not sample what was on offer that weekend, but my Grindr blew up anyway. There were just too many boys on Grindr looking, either free or paid. It was a virtual smorgasbord: 8. Speaking of gay establishments, the only gay club in town is "Voltage" a decent open-air dance club with a runway in the middle of the dance floor. There was a cover on a Saturday night ($4.50), and the music was the usual reggaeton and gay pop music that Colombians love, which was fine by me. My Chaturbate buddies invited the two other Chaturbate best friends along to go with us, after all their escorting duties were over of course (11 PM). The two guys paid for all our covers (it was a lucrative day for one of them), and I offered to pay for the drinks (seems fair). We opted to sit in the "VIP" section which was on an elevated platform overlooking the dance floor, which to me seemed a perfectly comfortable way to spend the night in. We were greeted by the drag queen (trans) in residence, with a waiter in tow, and she explained to us how it worked in the club, and what was in store for us that night. We came at a good night it seems. And our waiter who waited on us the whole night was hot: I paid $55 for a bottle of Buchanan's deluxe and some Coca Colas to wash it down, and surprisingly it was more than enough for the 5 of us for the night: It was a good night because the place was packed, and it was the coronation of Miss Trans Santa Marta that night as well: I'll say that this VIP section was a good idea, because it looked crowded down below with the masses, and up here we had the luxury of sitting in comfy sofas and talk without shouting. It was a good vantage point for the ceremonies as well, with the contestants and judges talking to us while the contest was going on: The main drag queen for the night, Kassidy, sat and drank with us and shot the shit. She was uber cool: Incidentally there was a gaggle of Chaturbate models with their boss in one of the tables that night. Since I already knew the boss I asked our waiter to get them a cheap whiskey bottle on me ($20). I scored brownie points on that one. Will collect on this favor later We left around 4 AM, with festivities still pretty much ongoing when we left. 9. Lots of AirBNB options for the area, and the one I chose had a king bed big enough for me and two chaturbate models. The building we stayed at didn't seem to mind letting the two other models in with the three of us, and all 5 of us were able to enjoy the two rooftop pools in the building. Overall Santa Marta is fun, but I would recommend it only if you are already in Barranquilla looking for a diversion, or visiting Tayrona National Park (fabulous by the way, a must visit). If hiring boys is a priority, lots to choose from on Grindr, mostly cam boys, but there are superior offerings in Cartagena, which is 4 hours away, and of course in Medellin and Bogota. The more choice boys along the Colombian Caribbean prefer whoring in Cartagena because there are more gringos there, but justifiably they will charge a little more because it costs more to stay there for the boys. However, I maintain that there are more choice free boys in Barranquilla in general, relative to Colombia, for some reason. Haven't had my Grindr blow up so much in Barranquilla.