PeterRS

If the senators prevent Khun Pita from becoming PM, I will be one of those on the streets! I know I am not Thai and I had no vote. But I will be there to support my Thai friends.

I was replying - literally or not - to no specific poster's post, and I made sure that was perfectly clear.

Did I refer to you or any other specific poster when I made my comment? No! And I will not do so. Your comment is somewhat irrelevant.

2025 will see Qantas operate the world's longest non-stop flights - Sydney to London and Sydney to New York. The longer London flight will have a time of 20 hours on an Airbus A350-1000. The aircraft will have six first class seats in a 1-1-1 configuration, 52 business class in 1-2-1, 40 Premium Economy in 2-4-2 and 140 economy in 3-3-3. New seats have been designed for the economy cabin with one inch longer leg room to give 33 inches. Economy will also have "wellness zones" with stretch bars for exercise. https://www.9news.com.au/national/qantas-reveals-economy-seats-for-19hour-nycsydney-ultra-longhaul-flights/e973d9d3-a0a7-4689-b795-b12e82a1d617

No, PrEP arrived much later. It was the hugely effective campaigns originated by Meechai and the government education programmes they inspired that helped reduce HIV rates. Since 2006 anti-retrovirals have been included in the national health scheme for Thais which effectively made them free. The same was true with PrEP which is distributed through Community based Organisations (CBOs) led and staffed by LGBTQ individuals. It was felt that gay men would be more comfortable interecting with similarly inclined individuals. But no sooner had international organisations started praising Thailand, the government changed tack. As reported in The Bangkok Post in February this year, the budget for CBO's was cut by 50% as it believed many of its patients could and should pay for their own medications. As a result, the Service Workers In Group Foundation (SWING) founded in 2004 is having to close such community clinics, including one on Silom. The second blow is that the Ministry of Health decided in December last year that communiy-based organisations were not professional enough. The result is that these organisations which had previously distributed 70% of the PrEP given out in Thailand are now forbidden to do so unless they have a direct link to a public hospital. The same edict applies to HIV medication. This move was immediately condemned by SWING and the Rainbow Sky Association of Thailand. It has also been pointed out that the government never fulfilled its claim to provide 50% of the CBOs funding. International organisations made up the balance. Now doctors in hospitals will have to prescribe PrEP, alhough the cost to individual Thais is likely to be little changed. But many younger Thais, especially young men, do not want to be seen going to a hospital for HIV medication in any form. The result of this and other government moves is that Thailand is no longer the leader it once was in HIV prevention and treatment. India and The Philippines have recently made greater strides through commnity-based organisations. As the Post article written by Stephen Mills, PhD, a Bangkok-based epidemiologist and the Regional Director for the USAID-supported EpiC project at FHI 360, also known as Family Health International, a US-based health and development organisation, points out - "the real losers here will be those Thais - often poor and stigmatised sex workers, gay men, and transgender women - who will have doors closed on them when they try to seek friendly and qualified HIV services. Thailand's quick pace to reach the end of its HIV epidemic has now slowed to a crawl and may soon go in reverse." https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2511266/thai-hiv-response-faces-setback It's hard to find up-to-date statistics on the rate of msm who have already been infected with HIV in Bangkok and Thailand. But statistics from recent years do not make for pleasant reading. The US National Library of Medicine published a paper in January 2022. I quote - ". . . integrated behavioral and biological surveillance (IBBS) among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Bangkok in 2003 found an HIV prevalence of 17.3%, further increasing to over 30% by 2005 and 2007. In biennial follow-up conducted through 2014, HIV prevalence among MSM continued to fluctuate around 25% to 30%, indicating ongoing HIV transmission at the population level. This high and increasing HIV prevalence was later confirmed from several other sources, notably the Thai Red Cross Anonymous Clinic (TRCAC), where 29.1% of 3485 MSM attending HIV testing and counseling (HTC) services from 2006 to 2009 were HIV-infected." Even more worryingly - "Receptive anal intercourse, lack of condom use, high levels of sexual partner turnover, drug use during sex, and finding casual partners via the internet have all been found to be associated with higher HIV prevalence and incidence among Bangkok MSM. In addition, fewer than half of MSM reported to have ever been HIV tested, and even fewer said to have actual knowledge of their current HIV status," There used to be an AVERT site with much more up-to-date statistics but I can no longer find it. Bit I do know that it confirmed by 2018/9 around 30% of msm in Bangkok are HIV positive. Lastly, a 2017 Thailand AIDS Response Progress Report "Thailand Ending Aids" has worring statistics about those in the 15-24 age group. It highights errors in young people's sex education programmes and the increase in the number of STD's detected - a 79% increase in gonorrhoea in 10 years and a 102% increase in syphllis, https://dearstraightpeople.com/2019/11/30/prep-guide-bangkok/#:~:text=Cost%3A The test%2C medical consultation,PrEP starts at 4%2C500THB. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8782340/ https://hivhub.ddc.moph.go.th/Download/Report/APR/2017/GARP2017 eng Final.pdf I suspect it is certain that some in high risk groups and the better educated have no problem getting their free PrEP from hospitals and hopefully this is pushing down the msm HIV rates. The worrying factor for me are the edge of town saunas where bareback sex appears to be the norm and far from all the participants will be on PrEP.

I realise the OP was made last year and the member will have already have made his visit. But after two visits to Istanbul I agree with @Mavica that if the main reason is sex, the city would certainly not be my choice. Rather than wasting time exploring for the sort of massage spas you can get in Thailand and escorts you can find in many other countries, take @davet's advice - I found it one of the most stunning cities I have ever visited and would gladly return. I stayed in a small hotel with rooms around a small courtyard - very close to the Blue Mosque. The early calls from the muezzin did not concern me as I always travel with wax ear plugs which completely block the sound. Great smallish room, great breakfast, great location.

No doubt some member may wish to stay at that hotel. It certainly looks iconic and you'd assume it was true 5-star quality. I spent two nights paid for by the Conference and then moved to a hotel I know to be vastly nicer, more comfortable and far less expensive. I see the Marina Bay Sands has dropped back to #54. The most recent review from a few days ago states ". . . it felt like everything is disorganized, maybe it was because the hotel looked like full capacity, breakfast we had to wait 40min in-line, the sky view pool was packed . . ." Clearly nothing has changed! And at 22,100 baht per night on agoda for one of its 2,500 rooms, it is a total rip-off. But that is not the worst horror I have had on my many travels!

I am sure that is correct. But whether it is permissible to mention a name and the bar/spa he might work for is an issue for the moderator. I know the Covenant that members have to agree to was written some years ago. It might be worth writing to the moderator to see if there is any update.

Gentlemen - I think perhaps a glance at the Board Rules makes clear what is and what is not permissible in terms of names. These state - "Personal information that can be used to identify a member, a user, or a go-go boy or bar boy, whether or not a Gay Thailand member, shall not be permitted. No member shall publish or cause to be published such personal information. A violation of the Covenant shall be cause for immediate termination of Forum privileges." I have no idea how the rule operates but it is clearly there. I realise that names have been used in a considerable number of posts in more than a few threads and I do not know of any termination of Board privileges. But are you really prepared to test the waters?

Around a decade ago, Business Traveller magazine had a two page feature on Tripadvisor and other 'review' sites which confirmed that Tripadvisor certainly manipulated reviews. I then wrote a post or two here on how it had manipulated the lousy standing of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore. I was booked in there when speaking at a Conference. For a 5-star hotel, I thought it was dreadful. 20-minute queue to check-in, 30 minute-queue for breakfast, 30 minute-queue to check-out, 5 to 8-minute queue every time you wanted a lift and my non-smoking room had at least a dozen cigarette burns on furniture. It was then ranked as around #65 in Tripadvisor's hotel list - the worst of any 5-star hotel in the city state. But this was and is the Singaopore government's pride and joy. And when the SIngapore government is pissed off, it does something about it. So over the next 18 months the hotel moved up to around #32. But all the 5-star reviews it received were one- or two-liners of the "great hotel", "fabulous pool", "definitely will return" variety. Clearly 90%+ were fake. I then wrote to Tripavisor's head office pointing out 20 reviews of this an other establishments that were clearly fake. I never received a reply, but within weeks 14 of those reviews had disappeared!

Although this trend has been happening in several Asian countries for many years - e.g. Japan and Singapore - the problem in Thailand in the 1970s and 80s was too many births. In the early 1970s the high birth rate of 3.2% was simply unsustainable if Thailand was to become a more developed country. In stepped Meecha Veeravaidya, a half Thai/half Scottish economist trained in Australia, who realised that the first step had to be making birth control a subject that was not hidden under the carpet, as it were, but openly discussed. Through his Population and Community Development Association he made condoms not merely acceptable - but popular! He staged all sorts of stunts around the country including condom blowing contests and filling condoms as much water as possible and then dropping them from a great height. He had T-shirts distributed with stick figures involved in various sex acts and the message "condoms please". His original Cabbages and Condoms restaurant remains a fixture on Sukhumvit Soi 12 in Bangkok (excellent cuisine incidentallyl). Now there are a dozen more around the country and even two in the UK. With his relentless advocacy, Meechai soon became known as Thailand's Condom King. And in many parts of the country, people still call condoms "meechais"! When HIV-AIDS came along, he intensified his efforts. For two decades he has been concerned that the younger generation is no longer taught about safe sex and the increase in the number of young people having unsafe sex. It was the first Thaksin government that reduced the funding for sex education in schools, something Meechai believes was a huge mistake. As he wrote some years ago, teenagers need to know that sex is natural, but “to master it rather than to let it master you.” Reversing the population downward trend is unlikely to be easy. As the country and individuals become richer - and as has been seen in other countries, young men and women are putting off marriage till much later. They are also having fewer children. My partner's brother who lives in Myanmar got married aged 16. That used to be quite common in Thailand. No more.

@fedssocr is, I think, correct in suggesting Skytrax is not known for its objectivity. Even so, when you look at the Skytrax flight review site it is obvious that Qatar does get higher marks than almost every other airline. Last year it topped the Airline of the Year Poll about 7th time and there has to be some reason for that. I have flown it between BKK and the UK about 7 times now and its business class is certainly extremely good, the more so if you get one of the Q Suites. My view is that only large international airlines have any chance of being named Airline of the Year as their customer base is likely to provide the most responses. The top 6 have very extensive route networks. Yet that said, it doesn't explain how Hainan Airlines with its smaller route structure makes the lists. From what I read, it is clearly an excellent airline and gets a very high 8 rating in the Skytrax reviews section. But the last passenger review is almost 2 years old and the parent company declared bankruptcy 2 years ago. The airline was one of the four separate companies which emerged. The international financier George Soros has been a shareholder in the airline since 1995. I can only assume the in flight experience remains extremely fine. I no longer fly in the USA. I see Delta has been creeping up the annual Poll. In 2015 it was #45. By 2020 it was up to #30. Now it's #24. I wonder what it has been doing right.

The aircraft was designed to handle 19,000 take-off/landing cycles. That is estimated to be around 25 years. Since Singapore Airlines received the first of the aircraft in 2007, in theory it should take that hull up to 2032 and beyond for later models. But many aircraft exceed their design capacity. Most airlines who flew the MD11 successor to the ill-fated DC10 ceased doing so by 2005. Yet more than 100 are still flown today by cargo carriers like Fedex. With so many A380s now coming back into service, I'd have thought that servicing for Global Airlines will be farmed out. No idea about avaiability of parts. If the airlines intend to keep the plane flying for serveral years, I wonder if Airbus would open up a factory to cover new parts to avoid bastardising older models.

I'm delighted the A380 will not end up in the graveyards to which it was due to be consigned pre-covid. But the trans-Atlantic route has been a veritable graveyard for start up airlines. Starting, I believe, with Sir Freddie Laker's Skytrain cheap daily flights across the Atlantic in 1977. In its first year it was a major success and Laker expanded his fleet of DC10s. The 80% capacity was well ahead of the 50% break-even. But Laker had not considered the dirty tricks thrown into the airline's path by the established carriers, especially BA, Pan Am and TWA. There were many reasons for Skytrain going bust, the conspracy of the legacy carriers being just one. Laker expanded too quickly, public confidence in the DC10 dropped after 2 flown by Turkish and American Airlines had crashed with the loss of all lives, undercapitalisation and others. The legacy carriers later admitted to conspiring to put Skytrain out of business and Laker won £85 million in damages. BA's dirty tricks campaign was repeated when Virgin Atlantic started up as a full service trans-Atlantic carrier. BA was determined to put it out of business. Virgin sued and won damaghes, costs against BA and a public apology. Several trans-Atlantic all business class airlines have started up betwen the UK and USA. Eos, MAXjet airlines and Silverjet all had their brief moment in the sun before going bust. Only BA now runs a 737 as an all-business class flight, but it has a brief stop at Shannon in Ireland for customs and passport checks to make the trip faster and more convenient. According to the media release, Global will have a 3 class product - first, business and economy - and a total of 484 seats. This compares to 620 on an Emirates 2-class A380. With one flight a day at the outset, it has no way of competing with the legacy carriers - BA has 12 daily London/New York flights and in total there are a whopping 36 daily flights! Global will have zero flexibility. Will the passengers who really make the profits - those business passengers up front - be prepared to pay premium prices when all manner of delays might strike their flight? I hope Global succeeds, but I fear it may end up as yet another graveyard start-up.

I seem to recall that whenever a poster quoted from another post, the poster's name was always attached to the start of the quote. It now seems that quotes no longer have the original's name. This can make it extremely difficult to work out to which post a reply refers - in fact it sometimes means having to read through a host of posts trying to find out the source of the comment being replied to. Please, please can quotes from earlier posts go back to including the names of the earlier posters!

And what good has it done, I often wonder. Virtually nothing I believe. With China totally unwilling to accept any disruption on its borders, it is one of the countries supplying the military with substantially amoounts of military aid. Russia the same (although that may be changing as it needs more and more supplies for its illegal incursion into Ukraine) - and perhaps surprisingly also Singapore. $254 million in imports originated from Singapore. This from a CNN Report of May 19. "Myanmar’s ruling military junta has imported at least $1 billion in weapons and military-related equipment since its bloody coup, according to a new United Nations report which said much of the equipment was coming from individuals and businesses in Russia, China and Singapore." https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/18/world/un-myanmar-report-military-junta-deadly-arms-sales-russia-china-intl-hnk/index.html

I recall when the first Skytrain lines were being constructed in Bangkok. Absolute traffic chaos daily.

I wonder if your view would be the same if the discussion was about your 5 Michelin star (or is it now 7) eatery in Bangkok LOL

The summer and winter solstices have played a major part in Chinese society for millennia. Prior to the advent of the Q'ing Dynasty, the summer solstice was always marked by a public holiday and many celebrations. In Hong Kong it remains a Festival Day and the annual Dragon Boat races take place on this day. Many buildings including Beijing's Temple of Heaven were built to celebrate the winter solstice which is virtually the second most important Festival after Chinese New Year. In Hong Kong all businesses close at lunchtime to give employees time to get home to prepare the traditional winter solstice meal. As one who is a lapsed Christian, I always think this is a more important reason for celebration than December 25!

I think there can be no doubt this man was a hero - very much an unsung hero in the amazing rescue of the boys and their coach. He basically had to command a very motley army ranging from the best experts in the world to the villagers who donated their rice paddies for drainage of the water from the cave. How sad that he should have died so relatively young! I hope all will remember his words taken from the speech he made when accepting on behalf of the entire team of rescuers the Asia Game Changer Award from the Asia Society in New York - “I wish the entire incident would inspire everyone to start living for others. This small change could be a game changer for the world.” May he rest in peace.

Very handy post. But after all that has been written and reported about scams I cannot believe that anyone is still stupid enough to fall for this sort of nonsense. Using one's brain rather than one's dick helps, I presume.

This reminds me of the disastrous earthquake of between 9.1 and 9.3 on the Richter scale off Bandar Aceh in Indonesia and the consequent equally disastrous tsunami in December 2004 . Although the epicentre of that quake was 1,100 kms away, so great was its magnitude it was felt in Bangkok. Guests in the high rise Banyan Tree Hotel (then named the Westin I think) had to evacuate the hotel and residents in other buildings on Sathorn somewhat less tall also felt quite violent shock waves.

A few years ago I based myself near Fussen for a week. Perched on the hill, Schloss Neuschwanstein looks stunning although the bus tours now make driving up there a real trial. I preferred the much smaller Schloss Linderhof with its beautiful gardens and lovely rooms. Also nearby is the stunning rococo design of the Wieskirche.

I've been travelling in Germany for several decades, visited many cities and villages, taken trains, flights and driven in several states many times - and never once had any issue whatever. The castle is not Castle Disney, although the Disney castles seem to have used it very roughly as a model. It is Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, one of several castles built by mad King Ludwig II who bankrupted the state's treasury by bankrolling the mega operas by the composer Richard Wagner. He was murdered aged 40 in the Lake at the castle where he was staying.

"He cares for nothing but his own fame and gratification . . . There is room for debate on whether he is a rogue or a scoundrel, but not much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth. Dignity still matters in public office, and he will never have it. Yet his graver vice is cowardice, reflected in a willingness to tell any audience whatever he thinks most likely to please, heedless of its contradiction an hour later. He would not recognise the truth, whether about his private or politcal life, if confronted by it in an identity parade." No, those words are not part of the historic, utterly damning, "punishingly brutal" Report published today by a UK Parliamentary Committee into the character of and the lies told to Parliament by its former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Worse, it has been infuriated by Johnson's attacks on the integrity of the Committee members and their finding that it increased his punishment. That Report, according to the BBC website, is basically about the fundamental pillars upon which public life - and society at large - is constructed. Conduct. Behaviour. Believability. Integrity. The Sanctity of Truth. The Contempt for Lies." Yet why has the Report and the content of my second paragraph come as such a surprise to the people of the United Kingdom over recent years? Why has it taken so long for them to waken up to the moral degeneracy of this man who four years ago was elected Prime Minister with his Party achieving a massive parliamentary majority? For if they had taken seriously the words written in my first paragraph, this buffoon would never have reached anywhere near high office, he would never have persuaded a majority that his sudden change of tune in promoting Brexit when beforehand he had been against it had been anything other than self-serving self-promotion without any heed whatever for the consequences, that he was in essence a coward, a cheat and a liar, Britain would not be in the mess it now finds itself in. For let's be honest, a quality his peers very obviously found lacking in Boris Johnson. The words in my first paragraph were penned by his former employer before Johnson got near 10 Downing Street, before his Party set aside their concerns about the bankruptcy of his moral character and handed him the highest office in the land. Max Hastings, a former editor of the right-wing Daily Telegraph, wrote them in a Guardian article on 24 June 2019. Johnson was elected Prime Minister by his Party just a month later. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65913299 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/boris-johnson-prime-minister-tory-party-britain No, he's not dead - at least not yet. But as a member of parliament and as a Prime Minister, this liar's obituary is already being written.