PeterRS

For what reason @reader? At my initiative, for which you'll recall you thanked me, we did so before. We came to an agreement. I would not criticise any of the multitude of posts you made by copying and pasting media reports. In return you would not comment on my choice for living in Bangkok when, unlike you and many others, I deliberately choose not to visit gay venues here. I have complied 100% with that agreement. Unilaterally you have totally broken it. You have shown you have zero integrity when it comes to agreements. So no more! I'm delighted that some of the younger generations are now making posting excellent posts. I wish them, the Moderator and other posters all good wishes. Goodbye!

Yet another piece of trite nonsense. Grow up @reader! Not everyone is like your good self. And that is precisely what you wrote when you were attacking my posts a couple of years or so ago by suggesting nobody lived in Bangkok and did not go to gay bars etc. You have obviously forgotten that I sent you a PM and suggested we bury the hatchet - as it were. You agreed and thanked me for suggesting it. But guess what? Now it all comes spilling out again. I am not like you, thankfully, and I do not try to live the sort of life you live! Similarly, although you may not like to admit it, you are not like me. Everyone on this Board is different and we should be relishing our diversity. But you just will not accept it and your method is to attack! So quit the name calling and the incorrect assumptions just because they do not fit your idea of what an older expat in Bangkok should be doing!

Happy to confirm that I did indeed delete the post just after posting as I thought it inappropriate

Another instance involving one of the 10 million illegal guns in private hands in Thailand - I assume!

Perhaps. But more likely a slip of the finger. Or the fact that having at the end of last year purchased a new mac desktop on which I write most of my posts, I find the keyboard dreadful and will soon purchase a different one. The computer and new operating Sonoma system is great but I see on the internet that this particular keyboard gets a lot of mediocre and even downright bad reviews.

That has absolutely nothing to do with issue, the more so when in this forum there has also recently been a discussion about older men walking around with guys very much younger. You can take it that the two are in their mid-20s and are exactly the same age to within about 4 months. 60 years before that I was at junior school! So your question is immaterial! As for my time from university onwards, I have never written anything other than I have enjoyed the life of a gay man to the full. I was never an angel! And having discovered Bangkok and much of the rest of Asia from 1979, I have written qute a few times that I was always a regular in go-go bars, saunas and latterly at host bars in quite a number of Asia's cities. I have never once tried to disguise that. Indeed this forum has many posts I have made not only giving guides about gay venues annd events (my several reports with extensive photographs about the annual Taipei Gay Pride Parades, for example) but also extolling the virtues of certain gay establishments, posts that others have found useful! So, again I ask, what is the point of that question? But when @reader writes - - he is not only making more than one incorrect and demeaning assumption, he knows perfectly well from my previous posts - and he has previously questioned with incorrect asumptions on my decision not to visit gay establishments here - that since I settled down in Thailand with my present partner I have never stepped into a gay establishment in Thailand other than once when with a dear friend from the UK who, following an excellent dinner, wished to see Telephone bar. That is just over 5 years. Given that virtually everyone anywhere close to my age on this forum who visits Thailand heads for the gay venues almost as soon as the plane lands, I suppose those elderly farang find it strange that someone who has lived here for so many years can elect not to do likewise for quite a few years. That I don't fit the presumed sex-starved stereotype here, then I am certainly not going to apologise for it. Insult me if you wish and if you are wrong, I will give as good as I get. But as no one here knows a thing about him other than what I have written, my partner is totally off limits, the more so when others start to assume he will act as they would react in a situation like that which occurred in Balcony. What a totally idiotic statement! You're like @reader in writing words I never stated! When did I ever write that my partner and his close friend were "drunk" or even "exaggerated" what they told me? I didn't! They weren't! And they didn't! They were having their first drink. End of that piece of rubbish. Don't assume @floridarob! And why would you even consider that two young Thai men who are inteligent university graduates making their first ever visit to any bar in any gay street would exaggerate something as disgusting as an elderly farang propositioning them? As I wrote very recently in the thread "Offing a guy from a bar (but not for sex)", many Thais have a natural in-bred modesty. What right does any bar patron have to assume anything about another bar patron - unless it is a specified host bar or go-go bar? No right whatsoever! When they returned to my apartment soon after, they said they felt like pieces of meat! And before you make any other wrong assumptions, my partner's friend sleeps on the sofa bed in the living room when he is here! Lastly I apologise to @revengeboo that the assumptions and comments from @reader and @floridarob have meant I have had to disrupt his thread of truly excellent posts.

Winton Road is an aware-winning winery. But Shiraz will not be sweet. It has a more earthy, spicey flavour.

Deleted

Would these be some of the many apartment blocks built by local developers pre-covid particularly to attract Chinese buyers - and some from Hong Kong and Singapore as well? Very small by farang standards - probably around 30 sq. meters or thereabouts? (There is a thread about this somewhere!)

So your reasoning got it all wrong again! Why should anyone be surprised? Who is the clown here, I wonder?

I have written about this before but I have such happy memories of the ten visits (2 a year) made to Bali in the early 1980s. I remember being surprised - and not a little delighted - at seeing young men strip off around 5:00 pm and wash themselves while completely naked in the water spigot in the garden of my simple hotel. Once I was on a Garuda DC10 flying from Denpasar to Hong Kong. As the aircraft was pushed back and waiting to taxi on the the runway, a young man again stripped off and washed naked in the stream parallel to the taxiway!

I will PM you as I do not think it is correct to name names and such specific events in this forum. But as the case you refer to (which I am sure is the same) has been written about in more than one book, there may be some way to write about it here.

Now you just add insult to injury. I AM NOT "on the prowl for young men" whereever I travel. NEVER! For years I have rarely visited a gay bar anywhere outside Thailand. on my own. I visit when friends take me. Yes, I have been to saunas occasionally. For your information gay saunas are where virtually all customers go to find other guys. For your further information, men and guys in Taiwan would never even dream of going up to others in the Red House bars and cafes (the gay equivalent of Soi 4) with any similar proposition. NEVER! When I meet guys on the apps overseas, they initiate the conversations. I can think of perhaps three occasions at most in the last five years when I have been the one to start it up. So never assume that other posters do overseas what you and others might do here in Bangkok. I would certainly never ASSUME that anyone is in a gay bar like Balcony simply for the purpose of solicitating others into paid sex. In any case, as you know perfectly well, paid sex has not been my thing for many years. I certainy would never dream of approaching any guy in a bar like Balcony. In case you are not aware, it is not a host club! It is a public bar in a public street both of which happen to cater primarily to customers who are gay. That one farang customer should have the gall to ruin the evening of two bright, intelligent young Thai guys is shocking! As @khaolakguy so rightly points out, this is no doubt one of the reasons many Thais no longer visit farang gay places like Soi 4. That is absolutely nothing like what happened to my partner and his friend. You simply have used an example of what actually happened to your twisted narrative. Is it not true that that guy basically took the initiative and proposed to you and you took him up and back to your hotel? Did my partner and his friend do something similar? Nothing like it! They were doing nothing but having a drink. They did not approach anyone. If you are going to quote comparisons, quote like with like - not like with unlike!

Even if a joke, I don't think that's funny!

I have also been to that pigeon restaurant and enjoyed fine meals there. But I've never even had the pleasure of tasting a Grange Hermitage, sadly. As for the man who ended up in prison, I have an idea I might know who he is. Without naming names, was he known as gay and imprisoned on a gay charge? If so, then I do know who he is and he has an amazing story. Sadly not to be repeated here as I believe the aforesaid gentleman now lives in Bangkok.

Agreed, but there surely are what we could term red wines that are sweeter than others - Beaujolais Nouveau, Rosso Dolce and Zinfandel perhaps. A Ruby Port would be ideal, but whether that is termed a red wine or a fortified wine, I'll let an expert advise!

With few exceptions I usually agree with most of @macaroni21's posts which are well thought out with considered arguments. But the first one above seems to me to have many flaws. 1. When it comes to tourism to Thailand, frankly the average wage of a country basicallly means virtually nothing. Of the vast number of Chinese tourists who used to visit Thailand, it is fact that the majority were on these cheap zero-dollar packages, travelled around in groups and stayed in cheap hotels. Sure they pumped cash into the local economy, but on a per capita basis it was not high. Naturally there were some wealthy Chinese who were on individual packages. Some even purchased apartments and generally spent a great deal more in the up-market shopping malls. But the situation now has changed very dramatically. Within China, there has been considerable negative publicity given to the murder of four citizens and wounding of others in Siam Paragon in October. One Chinese tourist was killed. According to the Bangkok Post, 60,000 Chinese then immediately cancelled their trips to Thailand. Chinese put a big premium on safety and Thailand generally had the reputation as a very safe destination. That has all quickly changed. The Chinese are avid social media readers and that frequently exerts a great deal of influence, especially in the rural areas whose population tended to feed into the zero-dollar tour market. The Paragon murder was very high on the list of posts on several major sites. Now hoteliers and tourism entrepreneurs in Chiang Mai have called for the government to enact stricter gun controls. For along with the murder in Paragon, the Chinese media has been giving a surprised public the facts about the huge number of guns in private hands in this country (some 10 million), by far the highest of any country in S.E. Asia. Suddenly Thailand seems a less attractive destination for many Chinese. And as the article on the OP states, making entry to the country easier will do precisely nothing to change that perception. Then there is the present economic situation in China which is very bad and due to get much worse. Youth Unemployment figures are so disastrous China has stopped updating them. In the 16-24 yo bracket, the numbers were 21% earlier this year - and that was before this year's roughly 10 million university graduates were added in the summer. These young people were not on any list of regular travellers pre-covid. But now they are increasingly having to depend on family members to keep them financially afloat while they try to find jobs that no longer exist. These were kids born during the one-child policy. So naturally lower-, middle- and upper-class families must help. Many family budgets are now stretched as never before in recent years. Yet it is the economic woes of the property market - an industry which used to employ huge numbers and was one of the key drivers of China's economic growth as it amounted to approximately 29% of GDP according to the National Bureau of Economic Research - that are now so massive that all the main 30 - 40 developers have defaulted on their local and overseas debts. Worse, though, many millions of individuals who paid for apartments have discovered they are still incomplete because the developers have no cash. In China roughly 90% of properties are bought during construction. Throw in all the losses from this for all manner of contractors and the ending of the vast amounts of cash developers pumped into local authorities and you have what is already a near-perfect storm. It is estimated that local governments alone are now sitting on US$12.6 trillion of debt according to the IMF. No one yet knows what the central government will do. But the total amount of accumulated debt threatens the wealth of tens of millions - if not many more - of Chinese who no longer have the sort of cash reserves to travel as in pre-covid years. 2. I have absolutely no idea how the Indian economy compares. But from what I see in Bangkok, there are many more wealthy Indian tourists now than I have ever seen before. Go to Central Chidlom as I do weekly and you alweys see many Indian couples with several large shopping bags between them. Even though the average wage may be a fraction of that in China, it has to be a fact that there is a sector of rich and very rich Indians around the country who have both a desire and now an opportunity to travel. They also have money to spend. My guess is that like the Taiwanese mentioned in the OP, this group is certainly not going to stay in cheap hotels. They will opt for 4- and 5-star hotels. THAI alone now flies from 7 Indian gateways, with additional flights from 4 of them over the holiday period. These flights all seem to be on wide-body aircraft. And that's only THAI. Naturally in terms of numbers, there is no chance of India overtaking the numbers which used to come regularly to Thailand from China. But in terms of average spend, I am more than reasonably certain the average Indian will spend vastly more than the average Chinese. 3. I absolutely cannot agree that Thailand does not have the infrastructure for high spending tourists. I do wonder where @macaroni21 gets that idea. It's true that outside the main tourist hubs, the hotels may not have similar 5-star offerings. But the number of high quality hotels in the main destinations is certainly very high. And the manager of no 5-star hotel would ever consider employing staff unqualified for such a position. In fact, it is the quality of the staff in Thailand's top hotels that for decades has made them the envy of many in other countries. So the suggestion about too many low-paid unskilled workers simply does not come into the equation! 4. Ah! Pattaya! I wondered if that was what your post was basically about. As has been stated in posts on several forums, Pattaya is not a destination for high spending tourists. Yes, some may go to the Hiton or the Dusit, but for those seeking some time at a beach I am more than certain the travel agencies catering to these high spending tourists will be proposing Hua Hin, Phuket, Krabi or more out of the way destinations like Khao Lak rather than Pattaya. All have 5-star and luxury hotels. There is very little in Pattaya to attract high spending tourists. And mass market is definitely not what the Thailand government is concentrating on. 5. I believe @macaroni21 is being extremely unfair on Taiwanese tourists. In a Paper issued in September last year, HSBC estimated that as a proportion of the population the number of millionaires in Taiwan would be the fourth highest in Australasia, reaching over 10% by 2030. Nearly 25 years ago I was engaged by the Hong Kong Tourist Association to work on an event project specifically targetted at the Taiwan market. Even in those days when the average wage in Taiwan was a great deal less than today, there were still many high spenders. For just one event promoted in Taipei by three travel agencies, roughly 10,000 visitors arrived from Taiwan over a week and spent more than the average tourist spend (which in Hong Kong was already quite high), with many staying in the 3-selected 5-star hotels - the Mandarin, Peninsula and Island Shangri-La. 6. Just to repeat, high-end spenders have absolutely nothing to do with mass markets. They are a niche group which in many developing countries is getting considerably larger. @macaroni21 suggests concentrating on richer Asian markets, markets like Japan and Korea. The problem there is that in both countries you have a population where the work ethic is so strong the vast majority only receive what to us would be very short holiday periods. If you want a large regular flow of tourists from either country, it's not going to happen until the Japanese, as an example, start to give employees more than the short May Golden Week, August Obon Week and a week or so around New Year off. There will still be more regular rich Japanese toursts. but just because the Japanese are wealthier certainly does not mean they are going to do much for the Thailand tourism economy.

When I heard about it, I was probably more appalled than they were at the elderly farang's behaviour. To assume that two guys in a bar for a drink and to people watch were money boys, to say so to their faces and then suggest he'd pay for their company for the night is disgraceful. I told the guys they should just have thrown their drinks over him!

A discussion about some pest and then others who drank red wine impying it was a "substance influence!" Now that I could not let pass unremarked 🍷

Problem is no-one ever treated me! And I can not justify the price of even one bottle of either. Rolex was a wonderful client in many respects. When working on one of their projects, the head of Hong Kong took me and two of his clients for lunch at Gaddi's restaurant in The Peninsula Hotel, arguably the finest French restaurant in Asia. He was one of just two people in all Hong Kong to maintain a private cellar in the restaurant's own wine cellar. A bottle of Chateau Margaux 1961 had been pre-opened. When it became clear that this was quickly disappearing, a second bottle appeared. What an extraordinary wine!

A superb multi-post report. As you have discovered, Thailand never ceases to surprise! My partner who basically put himself through school and university while working at various jobs, including a factory, had never been to any gay bar or other gay venue when we met. Through his relatively recent best friend, a gay Thai of his own age also at university, he had learned about the apps. His friend knew of places like Soi 4 and DJ station and one evening persuaded my partner to have drinks at Balcony Bar so he could see at least a bit of nightlife. Both guys are attractive. While they were having a drink at the bar, an elderly farang came up to them and said "hello!" He then added, "How much to have the two of you for the night?" They were actually appalled and hastened to leave the bar. My partner's friend is desperate to meet a mid-40-ish German and hopes to end up married in Europe. He meets quite a number of guys on the apps but all seem to want just sex (surprise!). But he had rarely gone to gay venues and never wants to return!

I'm delighted you enjoyed it. Sweet red wine is slightly unusual and probably goes well with peanuts. Those I mentioned in my post would be somewhat ruined by the salt in the peanuts. But to each his own taste. Wine can go with amost anything. Mind you, when China was opening up under Deng Xiao-ping's reforms, the Chinese businessmen who quickly became rich liked to entertain the principals of western companies with whom they were doing business - or whose production processes they were stealing LOL. They would host expensive dinner parties and order only the best red wine Chateau Mouton Rothschild - one of the 5 truly great Bordeaux wines - which they would then dilute with Coca-Cola! True!

And what, pray tell, is the problem with red wine? It can frequently be one of the world's great drinks which, in relative moderation, has absoutely nothing to do with "substance influences". I think you must be referring to Thai made spirits or some other ultra cheap booze. If you have never had even a glass of French Chateau Margaux, Haut Brion or Latour, you have missed out on some of the great enjoyments in life, (thanks to working with Rolex on some events I was treated to all three - wines that have forever been way above my pay grade), an Australian Bannockburn Burgundy, an italian Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, or rolled in your mouth a glass of the cherry, dried fig and cedar flavours of a fine Spanish Tempranillo or the meaty, robust richness of a Rhone Valley Chateuneuf du Pape, I feel slightly sorry for you. Even a cheap Valpolicella has certain redeeming features when accompanied by a pleasant Italian meal.

OMG! Another "Best of . . ." something or other. I am perfectly happy with a few of these lists when I know either who has done the selection or am aware that it has been made taking tens- if not hudreds - of thousands of views into consideration. CNN's latest list of The World's 50 Best Foods has Thai Massaman Curry as No. 1. But I was under the impression that this is primarily a Malaysian dish with part Indian ancestry! With Mexican Chocolate as #3 (huh? Very good but where is Belgian or Swiss chocolate?), German Hamburgers as #6 and Ice Cream, Global at #9 (and precisely what does that mean, i wonder? Is there no difference between a gorgeous Italian ice cream from Giolitti's in Rome and a diner in Wichita?) By this stage I was about to trash that list!, but that inglorious ending occurred at #14 United States Donuts! That list has so many errors it deserves to end up in the kitchen trash can. It lists Singaporean Chicken Rice at #45. It's not Singaporean. It's Hainan Chicken Rice that you get all over Asia. With Buttered Popcorn, Potato Chips and Ketchup as three separate items on the list, the introduction to CNN's list makes you want to hit the sick bucket fast - We’ve scoured the planet for what we think are 50 of the most delicious foods ever created. For now, feast your eyes and control your drooling, as we reveal some of the world’s best foods that can help inspire your travel plans: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/world-best-food-dishes/index.html