PeterRS

Although I have not used the rent boy services in Japan, I have friends living there and others who visit quite regularly. They give very good reports of this site which i have mentioned before - http://lang.dgdgdg.com/index.php#

As @macaroni21's earier post indicates, we should remember that the Chiang Mai gay scene was dying long before covid delivered a near coup de grace. Well over 50 venues, some very popular, had closed in the years leading up to the advent of covid. With the exception of Adam's Apple and a few others, Chiang Mai's gay venues are primarily for the local population.

I'll also believe it when the present demonstrations have subsided. Let's remember the Revolutionary Guard still exists. They are equally hated and basically do as they wish. My heart goes out to most Iranians who for the most part are a lovely, kind, cultured people with an extraordinary history. I can understand why they loathed the corrupt Shah and his murderous Savak Secret Police killing machine and thus welcomed Khomeini with open arms. But like all dictators, as my Iranian guides told me four years ago the present leader and his cronies pocket vast sums of money and have every incentive to do everything possible to stay in power.

Sorry I cannot help. I don't use the apps in most other countries. I have occasionally used them in Japan but it is 4 years since I was last there. All I can recall is that they were not very active.

So many Thais helped out in so any ways. I always think of the owners of the rice fields close to the cave as they had to be flooded as the cave was drained. They were offered compensation. None accepted it. It was their duty to help, they stated.

Love to be in the middle of that group of Korean guys in their underpants! Hopefully they would be off very quickly - the pants, that is! Photo: BBC Online When I was visiting South Korea regularly in the 1980s and early 1990s, Korean guys were mostly dull and unattractive. The macho look was virtually everywhere. Only in an occasional disco would you find a good looking guy. What a change since then! Walk through Seoul now and it seems to have almost as much gorgeous eye candy as Singapore. For well over a decade, South Korean young guys have spent more on cosmetics and grooming than their counterparts in any other country. One cosmetics retailer states its sales of mens grooming products in May and June 2022 increased 24% compared to the same period last year. Basic skin care products increased by 130%. Total countrywide sales are estimated to be worth close to US$1 billion. According to a 2020 CNN Report, around three quarters of Korean men undertake beauty or grooming treatment at least once a week. "This figure was even higher for Generation Z respondents, with 58% of those born after 2000 saying they pamper themselves with 'lengthy' beauty or grooming treatments at least once per week, compared to 34% of South Korean men overall. " https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220630000659 https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/south-korea-male-beauty-market-chanel/index.html

Thanks for that report. You are quite right to point out that any form of sexual activity or even trying to touch another guy's dick or ass are definite 'no-nos' in virtually all hot springs. This goes for South Korea and Taiwan as well as Japan. In Taiwan there are also notices (but only in Chinese) about no hanky panky in the steam room (although late at night there may be occasional touching in the steam room - if you can stand the heat of the steam!)

Not sure about Only Fans videos, but the bottoms in so many porn videos are very clearly 'acting' a part. All the facial and verbal expressions are there just to keep us interested. In some you can even hear the sound being dubbed over the visuals. It all reminds me of a scene from the early and excellent Jane Fonda movie 'Klute'. She plays a hooker. While in the act with a customer, the camera is on the guy's back. We see her bored face as she raises her arm to check the time on her watch as if to say, "How much longer?"

I don't pay for any subscription on any site which is no doubt why I get so many ads now. I actually found Jack'd as popular as Grindr, Hornet and Blued. I got rather pissed off that quite a few more guys than on previous visits were older than my preferred age. I'll have to get a Chinese profile, although I suspect many guys in Taiwan go only by the photos and don't bother to check much of a profile.

I forgot to add one point. I checked the apps in Taipei quite regularly. On previous visits I have found Blued very active. Sadly that site has changed its format and has many more ads than before. This may have something to do with the original owner of the site having stepped down as Chairman and CEO in August and the influence of Hornet which purchased a stake in Blued in 2016. I found Hornet the worst site for advertising.

Now that is really odd given your post in another thread that you would NOT go to see a doctor to determine if you have anal cancer or not. Which is it and why the change of heart?

But as I thought I had clearly stated, the Turkish Airlines jet was not departing. It was merely being towed to some far off part of BKK as it would not be departing for Istanbul for at least 6 hours. It had picked up no passengers and no luggage. The plane was empty! The only passengers waiting at that bay were China Airlines passengers. So Turkish Airlines was obviously late in arriving and then had merely to offload pasengers and luggage. There were several vacant bays in that part of BKK. Clearly Turkish had been assigned the same bay as China Airlines. But given that Turkish had clearly arrived very late and this would have been known to the air traffic controllers and the ground coordinators many hours beforehand, I fail to understand why Turkish could not have been assigned a nearby empty bay to unload its passengers and cargo. I am sure all the passengers waiting to fly to Taipei on the incoming China Airlines plane wondered the same thing!

I arrived back at BKK around 4:30 pm on Sunday. Despite there being many empty bays, my China Airlines flight had to circle around part of the airport because, we were informed our bay was waiting for a jet to vacate it. 20 minutes later we reached a bay which had just had a Turkish Airlines plane pushed away to be stored at another part of the airport until it departed for Istanbul close to midnight. This struck me as virtual incompetence on the part of the airport authoriites. If a plane is arriving only to deliver passengers but not to pick up any, why can it not be parked on arrival at an ajacent bay - or any bay for that matter. This would leave the China Airlines bay - with a near full plane by the look of the lounge area - free to accept the incoming aircraft without any delay. I was really surprised that fast-track Immigration was more full than I have ever seen it. Immigration did quite quickly open more desks but it still took longer than ever. No idea why!

The Blue Elephant on Sathorn has been open for about 20 years. It is a perfectly lovely up-market Thai restaurant with great food and service. Definitely highly recommended. Rather pricey though.

The only hotel I know above Shinjuku Station is the excellent Century Southern Tower on the top floors of a small slyscraper overlooking the train tracks (although it is not a business hotel). But this only goes to reinforce the fact that to a large extent room price reflects the size of the room. It is not a case of hotels for locals and those for foreigners.

What a load of nonsense! Russians are in a position to determine who leads them - and who leads them into an undeclared war and a vast number of war crimes.

I am certain you are correct. In my view, Taiwan's Gay Pride Parade - indeed its entire gay movement since the end of martial law in 1987 - has been so successful because it is organised by a group of committed individuals prepared to work within the system. The Pride Parade was started basically as an act of faith by this group in 2003. It both worked with the authorities and every Parade has promoted a different social message. Thaland's early attempts at Parades were entirely organised by commercial gay venues partly to promote themselves. Unless and until it can involve many more ordinary Thais to take part in the Parade, it will never be more than some sort of side-show - unfortunately.

I suspect not many will remember Jiang Zemin other than he took over the leadership of China when Deng stepped aside after 1989. As the obituaries have noted, he was a very different type of leader from the present President Xi. He even charmed Bill Clinton after Clinton had earlier virtually trashed him as a "butcher of Beijing"! He certainly seems to have been a man who revelled in life. A recent book about the tenor Luciano Pavarotti has an interesting anecdote which perhaps illustrates this. In 2001 the Olympic Bidding Committee was in Beijing making its final assessment of the bids for the 2008 Games. To coincide with this, the Chinese had organised a concert with the famous Three Tenors inside the Forbidden City. Until then, only Bertolucci had been allowed access to the Forbidden City for his movie The Last Emperor. Although none of the top leadership attended the concert, President Jiang invited the tenors to lunch the following day. After a pleasant lunch with Jiang, who spoke good English, the Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and the Minister of Culture, Jiang thanked the tenors for helping with the Chinese bid for the 2008 Summer Games. He then said there was a western tradition that you "sing for your supper". So he proposed that the tenors sing duets with the senior leaders. After Carreras sang something with the Culture Minister and Domingo with the Prime Minister, it came to Pavarotti's turn. President Jiang apparently loved the Neapolitan songs which Pavarotti had sung many hundreds of times. What he did not know was that Pavarotti not only could not read music, he could never remember words. So when they sang their duet, while Jiang was note and word perfect, Pavarotti could not remember certain words and had to resort to the Italian version of "rhubarb, rhubarb." That gaff aside, Pavarotti - clearly a very intelligent man despite his often appearing less so - claimed that having met many of the world's Kings, Queens, Princes, Prime Minsters and other senior leaders, he found Jiang the most intelligent of them all!

I wish we had a crystal ball to see what is likely to happen re Chinese tourism. The recent anti-lockdown demonstrations in many cities create a major problem for the regime. If they grow and spread to other cities, I wonder if the security forces will either try to quell them relatively peacefully or will, as happened in 1989, the regime will consider using force. It's a fascinating time in the life of the largest communist state. Perhaps ironically the World Cup has made the situation worse. Although China did not qualify, the Chinese as a nation are soccer mad. Nighly on their TV screens they see tens of thousands in stadia with no masks and no social distancing. Many will be asking why this is not possible in China. Re tourism, my view is that as a result of three years of lockdowns and the inability of so many to get to work, too many people have suffered such economic hardship that overseas trips will be out of the question for at least a year or two. I cannot see the regome opening up borders for external tourism in 2023. So it is likely to be 2025 before numbers return to anything like the 2019 level. The other worrying factor is that many Chinese remain unvaccinated. Those that are have most likely had the two Chinese made vaccines which we know are considerably less effective than the western ones. Many of those already vaccinated will be waiting for boosters. Without these, I can't see the world accepting planeloads of Chinese tourists.

Definitely agree. Visiting an onsen is very much part of Japanese culture - but as stated earlier it is not the same as a bathhouse. Many are located in extremely beautiful parts of the country and lazing in a pool just watching nature pass by can be exilarating. The etiquette is important and only takes a few moments to master. Agree also with a-447, don't be scared of the really hot pools. As he suggests, gently and slowly ease yourself in until the body is fully immersed. It's well worth the experience. Not sure I'd like a mixed hot spring, though. Too many older ladies, I expect, and they would certainly spoil the eye candy! 🤣

I have never been on a Vietjet flight that was less than 4 hours delayed. Never take it now even if the fare is lower.

Then why complain about it here? Are any of our posting members qualified in the various forms of cancer you routinely think you have? Unllikely, I suggest. If you think you might have cancer and you do not go to a doctor or hospital to have it checked immediately, you are merely trolling this Board - and I say that with repsect because I value some of your contributions.

Very few Thais will appear at public gay events in the country. This has been proven time and time again. The annual Pride Parade was stopped in the early 2000s because virtually the only participants were boys from the bars, massage spas and lady boys. Good on them, but you will rarely if ever see a professional Thai take part since Thailand remains a very conservative society. In 2009 the Chiang Mai Parade had to be abandoned when those watching it hurled abuse at the marchers and it threated to become violent. I heard that the Bangkok Parade which was reinstated this year did have a better turnout, but it is still mostly organised by gay venues rather than individuals. Even with few tourists taking part as the easing of covid restrictions came to late, this year's Taipei Gay Pride Parade had 120,000 participants. Clearly the vast majority of these were ordinary Taiwanese men and women, far from all of them gay since traditionally parents have brought their kids to take part. Bangkok's public gay displays will never take off until the culture of the country changes.

What a ridiculous article! On the one hand "Thai tourism may take a sharp downturn next year", yet later it claims "authorities in Thailand remain hopeful that tourism revenue will continue to increase next year." I accept that tourist numbers and tourism receipts are not the same. But the artucle is full of "could", "fears", "believe" etc. In other words, no one has a clue. I'd certainly like to see statistics of European travellers spending longer in Phuket because of the 45-day stamp. Presumably these are backpackers or retirees since most working people do not have much more than 30 -day annual vacations, if that.

So the truth - in part - begins to come out. Previously the Qatar government had admitted to less than 10 deaths. Detailed studies by several organisations and media outlets had put the number at far closer to 7,000. Since the Qatar government refused autopsies, it was clearly a deliberate attempt at a cover up. Most of those workers had to pay recruiters large sums to get jobs working on the World Cup infrastructure. With their deaths, the Qatari's have offered no compensation. The country claims the deaths were by natural causes such as heart failure or respiratory failure. So the families of these workers are left with major debts. Forbes Magazine and various other sources have put the cost to Qatar of hosting the World Cup at $200 BILLION! Yet, it refuses to pay the relatives of those who died preparing for the event even a few thousand $$. The Qatar World Cup has brought a new word into the lexicon - sportswashing. Quick to get on the bandwagon has been Saudi Arabia which is now hosting a number of major international events in the Kingdom. Along with its neighbouring countries, it owns several of the world's top soccer clubs including English champions Manchester City, Newcastle United and French League leaders Paris-Saint Germain. Emirates, Qatar Airlines and Etihad also plough hundreds of millions into clubs through sponsorship. The latest sport to be upset by Arab investment is the Saudi backed and financed LIV Golf breakaway Tour. It has lured top golfers away from the US PGA and European PGA tours by offering absurd amounts of money. Sign on bonuses of well over $100 million have been paid to Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson (Mickelson has been reported in London's Financial Times as having received $200 million even though he had previously declared the Saudis "scary motherfuckers to get involved with", that he ackbowledges they killed Adnan Khashoggi and "have a horrible record on human rights.") LIV Tournament Prize Money vastly eclipses anything offered by the other regular tours. The LIV tour is estimated to be costing Saudia Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund $2 billion - annually. https://www.ft.com/content/b5b110a6-9280-4d7a-a0b6-09ef2a423c7a