PeterRS

I don't think it was just a case of following rules, it was more of being caught by the massive number of security cameras around the place. Also one guy told me he valued his job and would never break that particular rule. Different rules or different shopping lilnes perhaps.

Although this is going back in time, the Hyatt and what was then The Regent (later the Four Seasons and now the Anantara), both on Rajadamri, denied visitor access to rooms from evenings on and had security at the lifts to check. Getting guys up meant checking when lifts would be arriving back at ground floor level and security with his eyes elsewhere. No idea about situation now.

I wish I had been on one of your cruises! There were several cute Thai guys on my 17 day cruise, but I was told any crew member in a guest's cabin unless on the housekeeping staff or room service would be immediately fired!

I feel very much the same! I often thought in part it might be due to getting older and having more time to consider the state of the world. And then I thought about my parents and their generation. Their news was based on daily newspapers, radio news bulletins and later shortish television news bulletins. I remember them discussing a few national issues like the colossal mistake when France and Britain invaded Egypt in a vain attempt to re-take the Suez Canal afer Nasser nationalised it. It helped dethrone a UK Prime Minister and probably eventually a government, but that did not seem to matter so much to them. When relatives and their friends came round, I rarely remember national issues being discussed. I suspect there are are primarily three reasons for the changes since those days. The advance of television and the influence of television news programmes (and the political views of the owners of the stations) on everyone's thinking is onviously one. I can remember the times when the BBC was trusted as almost saintly in the way it reported actual facts. Interviews with politicians were genteel affairs. And if they ever ruffled politicians' feathers, there was hell to pay. One of the BBC's finest reporters and foreign correspondents was James Mossman. One evening he basically lost his BBC cool. There was a famous iive interview with Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He verbally attacked Wilson over his government's backing for President Johnson's stance on the Vietnam War when this appeared at odds with Wison's own philosophy. When Wilson, as was his habit waffled, Mossman would not let up. He kept on and on at Wilson in a manner we are more used to today. Wilson stormed out of the studio furious and made his anger known to the Director General the following day. Mossman was quickly relegated to hosting a new programme about the arts. Unhappy about his demotion and being away from the action of politics and foreign affairs, Mossman went into a depression. As a gay man he had fallen in love with a younger Canadian boyfriend. But he had died in his early 30s of an accidental overdose. Aged 44 Mossman then took his own life. If anyone is interested, there is a fascinating play about Mossman which was premiered at London's National Theatre 15 years ago. Titled The Reporter it was written by Nicholas Wright. The second reason surely is the freedoms that people in power now have to assert their own views however outlandish, wacky, even untrue they may be. Television has mushroomed to include channels to cater for every taste. I'm not sure to what degree they actually influence the views of most, but they certainly reinforce existing views. Thirdly social media has become an amazingly popular way to spread nonsense. Of course, much of its content is perfectly acceptable, but increasingly it seems to be what I call unsocial media. I actually fear for our futures when people like Musk, Trump and others increasingly control what they want us to believe.

You are abosolutly correct. Sorry for my error.

Apologies! I thought I had read comments on the forum some months ago about how it had closed. That's why I was a bit surprised to see it on Patpong 2. It is obviously where is always was - on the upstairs.

Is it likely that Madame Sunee who seems to own most of that area also owns Nice Boys which is slightly outside?

There was a famous case which I have written about some years before involving the head of Hong Kong's most prestigious law firm. His company was involved in defending a major corporate client in what was to become Hong Kong's longest and ultimately most farcical court case. On the day he was due to provide evidence to the police, he did not appear. Those sent to his home in Hong Kong's wealthiest district found his body at the bottom of his swimming pool. So far, suicide might seem possible. But, he was dressed in his immaculate three piece suit and tie, his black highly polished shoes placed side by side at the poolside and a metal chain was around his neck tied to the grille at the bottom of the pool. Suicide much less likely, one would think. Not so, said the coroner, who delivered a verdict of suicide! So much of this case was like a detective novel. The defendant, a small Malaysian businessman named George Tan who had been declared bankrupt in Singapore in 1972, arrived in Hong Kong where he opened a small pest control business,. Soon he opened another business which he appropriately named the Carrian Group. Soon Carrian was on the lips of all investors after it paid a monstrous amount for a smallish skyscraper in Central Hong Kong, certainly vastly more than it was worth at the time, and then sold it months later for an even larger amount. As Carrian expanded within little more than three years into property, insurance, shipping, hotels and restaurants on three continents, a major economic property bubble had started. But Carrian was built on sand, much of it illegal. A Malaysian banker from a bank which had lent Carrian US$600 million was sent to Hong Kong to find out what was happening. He was found strangled in a New Territories field with his luxury hotel bathrobe around his neck. Long before Enron and Worldcom, Carrian had perpetrated the largest financial fraud of its time - the early 1980s. Apart from massive corruption and murder, Carrian was guilty of false accounting, illusory profits from a multitude of companies, use of offshore companies which shifted money around before regulators knew what they were up against etc. Carrian was found to owe 40 banks, some of the best-known in the business, US$1.5 billion. Eventually Tan and an associate were arrested and tried. The judge, Justice Barker, was relatively new to Hong Kong and it became clear as months and months of financial evidence was being presented before him and the jury, that he was losing the plot - quite literally! Somewhat ironically I had met the Justice. He was a friend of a UK friend of mine, a fellow circuit court judge. It was suggested I meet with him. Instead, I assumed, of a plush bar in the city's Mandarin Hotel, he suggested a pub by the name of The Bull and Bear. I throroughly enjoyed Denis Barker QC's company, but was concerned that being lunchtime he was drinking a considerable amount when I assumed he'd be presiding over some case or other thereafter. The Carrian case dragged on for 18 months. By then Barker was away with the fairies. He announced to the jury that eveyrthing was far too complicated and the accused had nothing to answer for! It was a scandal of enormous proportions. A judicial review found Barker guilty and he had to retire from the bench. Barker and his wife left Hong Kong soon after that. He retired in disgrace to Cyprus. Soon after, he wrapped his car around a tree. He left so many debts that his wife, whom he had married just before settling in Cyprus, sent his robes to the Chief Justice in Hong Kong hoping they could be sold and enough money raised to provide a headstone in Cyprus. Whether that headstone exists, I have no idea!

With a free afternoon I went to see Napoleon yesterday at the iMax Theatre in Paragon. I wish i hadn't! I have admired many of Ridley Scott's previous movies. This one should have been left on the cutting room floor. It was just incredibly boring. The start is confusing, even for those who know some of the history of immmediate post-Revolution France. The scenes with the guillotining of Marie Antoinette were both unecessary and even farcical. Watching on is the young Napoleon - although Joaquin Phoenix never looks anything other than his late-40s self. Indeed I sometimes wondered if he was actually acting. His performance was rather like a glove puppet with just two faces - moody and angry! Could he not actually have smiled during his intimate scenes with Josephine? Or shown something akin to rapture when rutting her from behind which is shown twice? Nope! Just the same old moody face. Some have praised the battle sequences. The first, the lifting of the siege at Toulon, had some merit but the ships were all too clearly models or computer generated. Thereafer it was mostly "been there, done that". We are shown the march to Moscow with snow on the ground. But this took place in September when the weather in Russia is lovely. He then enters Moscow and there is not even a wisp of snow around. "Where is everyone" he asks on entering the abandoned city. Later he awakens to find the city on fire. Yet the fire had started just before or just after he had entered and before all the inhabitants had left. All this - indeed the whole movie - is littered with dialogue which is mostly dreadful. I was tempted to laugh at some points - and that is definitely not the mood Scott was looking for. Overall I found it a totally wasted opportunity to bring to life a character whose existence should have been fasinating. I found the advance trailer for Timothee Chalamet as Wonka much more fascinating!

For Christians, I agree, although that does not stop Evangelicals and certain other more extreme branches of the Christian faith to quote Leviticus when talking about family life. But I am not sure you are correct about what Jesus said. There are at least three references to homosexuality in Paul's epistles in the New Testament. Although not specifically relating to homosexuality, Jesus himself mentioned marriage in a tradtional heterosexual way when in both Mark and Matthew he refers to a discussion about divorce. Plus the authors of the New Testament - the Councils summononed by Constantine to determine what would be included in the New Testament and what left out - were deeply rooted in the Old Testament Jewish tradtion which in essence prohibited homosexuality. But I am no expert on the Bible not having opened one for decades and so I leave future discussions here to others.

His name is Meechai Ruchuphan. He was indeed a hero of his times. In the 1960s and early 70s he realised that the high birthrates in Thailand would mean the country could never develop economically. Since nothing was being done about birth control, he took it upon himself to promote condom use. He quite literally travelled all around the country, demonstrating how condoms should be used, popularising them through condom balloon contests and dropping them from height filled with water etc. He persuaded condom makers to use colours. In general, he took the stigma right out of both birth control and condoms. His two Cabbages and Condoms restaurants still continue to draw customers 50 years ago the average Thai woman would have six children. Now the rate is around 1.6. This chart shows the dramtaic success all due in large part to Meechai.

I have never claimed to be an expert on the bars today - or even the more recent yesteryear. Although oddly I did walk through Patpong 2 six times in the last two evenings since I had to stay in a hotel on Suriwong while work was going on in my apartment! I noted that the Patpong Museum has moved to lower Patong 2 across from Foodand - and mention this only because there was a thread some months ago which I believe indicated the Museum had closed. My experience goes quite a bit further back. So I am perfectly happy that those who visit the bars nowadays do not agree with me. What I do know perhaps a little more about is the Thai elite. Not that I have ever been acquainted with more than one of them, but i also know quite a few who I call "semi-elite" in that they aspire to move up the social ladder and perhaps gain a Khunying or a Thanphuying title for their good deeds (which many actually get others to do for them!) In voicing my thoughts, I can assure you (should you wish such assurance and many will not) that I have aso spoken to good friends in Thailand, some of whom I have known for four decades, others more recently. They are much more closely connected to higher ups in Thai society than I would ever wish to be. Quite a few are friends with the writer, author and Asian expert, Alex Kerr. Although American, Kerr was born and brought up in Asia, has degrees in Japanese studies from Yale and in Chinese studies from Oxford Universities. With half a lifetime in Japan and half in Thailand, and several major books now published around the world, he has a vast circle of friends, mostly Japanese and Thai and mostly native experts in one or more fields . His first book Lost japan won Japan's highest literary award. Kerr is the only foreigner to achieve such a distinction. Afer moving to Bangkok he wrote Bangkok Found. This is no travel guide. More it delves under the surface of Bangkok and Thailand to explain basically what is what and not only why things are what they are but why they are still permitted to be what they are. His chapter on gay and straight nightlife is interesting for it gives a much greater insight into why things like go-go bars exist, why the elite loathe them and why, in Kerr's considered view, they will unlikely enjoy continued success in the longer term. That book has recently been substantially revised for publication by Penguin in other parts of the world. I have only read the original. For those wishing to explore more of Bangkok and all its glamour, excitement and occasional seediness it's a particularly easy read, but it is difficult not to agree with Kerr's views based on the multitude of those whom he consulted when writing it.

There you go again! You cherry pick from the much longer linked article. Yet you failed (again) to note that the first two possibilities were - Suicide and Accident - Really The long arm of the Kremlin I am surprised that you did not bother to quote the Suicide and Accident paragraphs, for they possibly could fit your theory. Mind you, that starts with these words - According to the experts I spoke with, the sheer volume of accidental deaths and suicides so far is enough to mean that this is unlikely to be the true explanation in every case. It’s not impossible, however; sometimes a suicide is just a suicide and an accident is just an accident, no matter how odd . . . according to Peter Rutland, a Russia expert and professor of government at Wesleyan University, Russia’s system, and perhaps especially its business community, is under substantial pressure due to the war. “These are incredibly stressful times, right?” Rutland said. “Business people have seen their chances to visit Europe frozen, their assets frozen, their yachts seized, the value of the shares in their companies.” Those factors, Rutland told me, could conceivably provoke a spate of suicides. “If businesspeople had loans that were collateralized with those assets, or which required some kind of business income, which has just disappeared because of the sanctions, you can only imagine that that would drive people to suicide,” he said. But, the kicker. He then adds - Of course, that doesn’t account perfectly for the murder-suicides, or the number of fatal accidents. But it’s not impossible that at least some of the deaths are no more than what they seem on the surface. Some!

Sorry I just can’t agree with that. As has been stated several times before in this forum, the main reason is the improved economic opportunities for upcountry boys who used to supply most of the gogo bars as a result of Thailand’s considerable economic gains since the 1997 Asian Economic crisis. No longer do most have to work in the rice paddies or do other low paid work in the villages. Escalating rates of HIV and greater emphasis (no more alas) on health education may also have had something to do with it. I suspect bar owners would prefer more Thais to foreigners, many of whom are here illegally - but that’s just my guess. Another guess is that if there is a major clampdown on undocumented foreigners working in bars, I can’t see more Thai’s jumping in to take their place, even in the case of an economic recession as @reader has suggested. I reckon the apps will have done their job by then and the boys will prefer telephone dates to nightly parading and offs in bars.

Wrong again! The most recent have been in Moscow and prior to that in Venezuela in September this year. Seriously, do facts ever really mean anything to you or do you not realise they can be easily checked most of the time? And when you make errors - e.g that nonsense about Putin speaking about the freedom of gays to live their lives in Russia when in fact as is totally obvious from the YouTube video his words have nothing to do with Russia since he is just mocking the west(!), you never admit that you are merely spreading Kremlin propaganda. I suppose it takes all sorts!

But Leviticus has absoutely nothing to do with the New Testament! Leviticus is one of the first five books of the Old Testament, named the Pentateuch and basically the Jewish Torah. It was compiled in the Persian period from in 538-332 BC and their authors were the elite of exiled Jewish returnees who controlled the Temple at that time. So it has nothing to do with Christianity and the various issues you list.

The Bangkok go-go bars in the 80s and 90s were certainly very different. On the other hand, the basic premise was always the same. Get the customer to buy drinks at inflated prices and then pay off fees to get as much cash from that as possible. I think I'm known on the forum as more skeptical than some as far as the future is concerned. Yes, more and more younger guys will be available to go to the bars in the future. The question for me is more how long will the government continue to tolerate them and permit them to operate. The elite and the army loathe the fact that Bangkok especially has the reputation as the sex capital of Asia. We saw the first major attempts to clamp down on the sex trade in the early 2000s with Thaksin's social order campaigns. SInce then the apps have been doing a good job at weaning some sex tourists away from the bars. So far, they have survived, although now very few Thai boys work in them - very unlike the 1980s and 90s. But we know the government can, if it wishes, make employment of boys from neighbouring countries even more difficult at the stroke of a pen! We know this is a socially conservative country. I suspect that those many millions who voted for Pita Limjaroenrat's party are like the elite in wishing to see the end of the "sex capital" description. But that is a very personal view. So generally my view is simple. The government will in future do what it can to drive sex bars off the streets. We have already seen what has happened in Chiang Mai which as a gay destination with gay venues is all but dead, whereas 20 years ago it had a large, thriving and fun gay scene. That may well result in just pushing the businesses underground and out of sight - rather like that which we know already exists for Thais and about which expats and tourists know nothing. Hopefully I am wrong.

Surely the problem is that many of those who watched it will in fact have believed it, if only because it reinforces stereotypes they have been fed for decades. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's a massive job to get it back!

I agree, but surely the sad fact is there are far too many around the world who take the wording in the primary religious books as just that - 'fact'. I have written this before some years ago, but there are some who object to the writings and misinterpretations about homosexuality and the fact that Bibles are placed in the bedside drawers in a huge number of hotel rooms. This well known activist whom I shall not name always looked for the Leviticus verses and tore the pages out of these Bibles! Some will object to such 'destruction'. Others will applaud. Well, he is an actor!

I have to admit I have done three cruises - and paid for none! My late best friend whom I had known for 48 years was a great public speaker. In the late 1990s he was hired by the small luxury Seabourn Cruise Line (the ships in its small fleet then generally accommodated only 400 or so passengers) to give lectures on a subject on which he was something of an expert. This quickly became a regular summer activity on a number of cruise lines. Most of his cruises were about 8 weeks in the summer. His wife usually accompanied him but as she was a teacher she frequently had to return home before they ended. If none of his children or grandchildren could complete the cruise with him, he'd kindly invite me. I had three cruises on two Cruise Lines - a week from Athens to Istanbul (my first visit to that stunning city), a week from Malta to Venice (sailing into Venice at dawn was one of the great travel experiences), and then unusually one February a 17-day cruise from The Bahamas around the Caribbean before sailing 1,600 kms up the Amazon to Manaus. As @fedssocr points out, the rooms with balconies, excellent food (but far too much of it given there were 7 meals a day!), free open bar were initially great but best of all were the shore excursions and the destinations. But I did find that one week was enough. The 17-day cruise really began to bore me by half way through. I could join those cruises thanks to free tickets due to tons of air miles. One cruise he and his wife joined was on The World. This is an almost unique large ship with one-, two- and three-apartment residences which you purchase for a humongous amount as you would an apartment on land. Indeed, some passegers do live full-time on the ship. The owners then determine the ship's itinerary. Since the accommodations are so spacious, average occupancy is only 150-200. When my friend did his lecture cruise, there were all of 65! https://aboardtheworld.com/residences/

Oh dear @Moses! Why do you not quote correctly? The banning is of the International LGBT movement and its activities in RUSSIA! The reason? As stated by the Court LGBT "activists" should be designated as "extremists". But again you quote no sources! President Vladimir Putin, expected shortly to announce that he will seek a new six-year term in March, has long sought to promote an image of Russia as a guardian of traditional moral values in contrast with a decadent West. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-supreme-court-bans-lgbt-movement-extremist-2023-11-30/#:~:text=MOSCOW%2C Nov 30 (Reuters),lead to arrests and prosecutions.

Oh! Russia has many ways of eliminating those it sees as some sort of threat to its leaders. There was the poison-tipped umbrella killing of a Bulgarian dissident in London. Being fair that was pre-Putin. Much more recently has been the attempted poisoning in March 2018 of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in England by a Novichok nerve agent. It was the first known use of a military grade chemical agent on European soil since WWII. That attempted murder failed when not enough of the poison found its way into their bodily systems. But Russia was accused of attempted murder of double agent Skripal and led to the explusion of an unprecedented 153 Russian diplomats. 28 other countries agreed and all expelled Russian diplomats. In June 2018, two British nationals were also infected with Novichok and also close to Salisbury. One died. He had found a perfume bottle in a litter bin. It was later proved this had been left by the Russians in March. The public enquiry traced the poisonings to Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Both were later identified correctly as Russian GRU agents operating under false names. Both are part of the highly secretive Unit 29155 of the GRU. Petrov is in fact Alexander Mishkin and Boshirov as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga. It was later discovered that both travelled on passports with just three digits separating the numbers. These fell within the range of a Russian military official earlier expelled from Poland for spying. The nerve agent was identified as Russian Novichok developed by the Soviet Union in 1980 by the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons along with British laboratories. Vil Mayazaranov, a former Soviet scientist who had helped develop the Novichok range of chemical weapons, stated that hudreds of people would have been effected by residual contamination and the Skripals would be left with debilitating health issues for the rest of their lives. Interestingly the two Russian GRU personnel were interviewed by Russian TV in September. They claimed they had flown to Britain as tourists - for just two days? Who did they expect would believe that? And the only object of their tourism was not to see London or do anything in the UK other than to see Salisbury Cathedral which theyclaimed they had heard was worth visiting! And as if anyone would believe that! They shouldn't because the local street cctv cameras showed they never went near the Cathedral! The BBC traced one of the perpetrators to his home in Moscow. He only said he had been a tourist before shutting the door. The end result was that Putin was furious at the botched attempt to murder Skripal and ordered a purge of senior officials in the GRU. The head of the GRU "died" 2 months later. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/26/skripal-poisonings-bungled-assassination-kremlin-putin-salisbury

This is somewhat of a tangent. I have never hired a Siam Roads guide as I love doing my own exploring around a continent I know quite well after so many decades. But I did have one young man contact me on an app during one trip 3 years ago just prior to covid closing borders. We spent two lovely days together and he was clearly experienced in sex which was great. It was only later I discovered he was a Siam Roads guide. Obviously on his days off!

As far as the raids being to find drugs, given the timing just a couple of days after the anti-gay legislation was passed, that has to be the joke of the week. Also @Moses information again is incorrect. It was more than one bar/venue in Moscow. One was the dance club Malaya Yakimanka Ulitsa with more than 300 attending. But the raids were on several - all as reported by The Moscow Times and in other Russian media. One was a club near Avtozavodskaya metro station and another a men's strip club near the Polyanka metro station. But then of course @Moses never provides sources - except for once when the two he posted were in Russian and Japanese and on translation were found to have nothing to do with the subject of his post! As for St. Petersburg, his information is also 100% misleading. The club in St. Petersburg was the long established Central Station which was not actually raised but forced to shut down on Friday after its landlord evicted the management "over the Supreme Court's ban on the LGBT community." Also referring to @Moses second paragraph, I have listened to the exact words Putin said two weeks ago. It is 100% clear he was talking exclusively about western society, and he was laughing when he said it! His words had absolutely nothing to do with Russia and Russian society. So @Moses is yet again trying to pull the wool over our eyes. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/12/02/moscow-police-raid-gay-clubs-after-extremist-ban-on-lgbt-community-a83297

Following the introduction of the new anti LGBTQ law, Russian police have been quick off the mark to raid gay clubs. The BBC has reported that several Moscow clubs were raided on Friday. Club goers had their passports/identity documents photographed. One attendee said he feared he would be "given a lengthy jail term." AP reports that a male sauna was also raided. Police stated merely that they were looking for drugs! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67601647 https://apnews.com/article/russia-lgbtq-nightclub-raids-crackdown-33e1b9a0110bf22dc2ebc7c42efe6335