PeterRS

With respect, I'm not sure that is entirely correct. The Americans leased U-tapao for their B52 bombers during the Vietnam War. With so many randy young men, they naturally wanted an outlet for their sexual urges. It was I believe this group that resulted in the sex scene in nearby Pattaya. R&R quickly became known within the forces as I&I (intoxication and intercourse) in of course the girlie bars for which Thai enterpreneurs had noticed a big demand and the big profits that could accrue! That war ended in 1973. Some GIs no doubt visited Bangkok and helped develop the commercial girlie bar scene here in Patpong. But the numbers were I believe far fewer than in Pattaya. Bangkok has had a sex scene for gays and straights from time immemorial. Foreigners rarely get near it for the very simple reason we are not wanted there. With the adoption of democracy in 1932, we know that several gay groups did then develop, but they were condemned by society as a whole. With so many gay personalities visiting Thailand from around World War I - Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and the at least bisexual Joseph Conrad etc. - there may have been a gay haunt or two, or did these men either stay with their partners of the day or just find young Thais happy to spend time with them? After WWII we know that there was a farang gay group which included Jim Thomson, the Thai Silk King, and which did meet quite regularly. Eventually there was a gay bar. I have seen its name as Sea Hag but can not be sure. But this was also a time when the Thai media was very anti-gay and outed quite a number of well-known gay personalities. This lasted well into the 1960s. Although the original Twilight (not in its later Soi Twilight location) and one of two other gay venues started in the late 1960s, it was not tilll the late 1970s that the gay explosion started. And as stated earlier, most of the clientele in those days were Thai.

How about those in Asia getting to Taipei for its great Gay Pride Parade and associated party week-end on October 29? Much closer and cheaper - and a barrel load of fun.

The nonsense just gets worse. Now the dreadful Boris Johnson is being considered by some as the ideal candidate to restore the fortunes of the ruling Conservative Party. This despite the rules of his party forbidding a PM who has resigned from standing again. But then Johnson never bothered with rules. This is the man who was kicked out of the PM job when much of his cabinet resigned not so long ago and for the litany of untruths he had inflicted not only on the UK people but worse on his fellow parliamentarians. Britain's only PM found guilty in a police prosecution. For decades those in the UK have laughed when talking about the chaos of multi-party politics of Italy. Funny how Italy has always survived quite well whereas the UK now is in a state of near total meltdown. As we have seen in the USA, a two party system - or one where two parties have the vast majority of seats - becomes a mockery when the very people elected only want to hang on to their seats and their salaries. Or as with Trump to avoid a litany of illegal deeds.

It looks very nice if you are happy with the price. I don't know that chain at all.

I am sure you are correct becuase Chiang Rai is in a different Province from Chiang Mai. The most serious damage was done to the famous White Temple which its architect fered would have to be demoloished. Fortunately they were able to save it. Photo: Dreamstime https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1755-6724.14775

Isn't a key part of life to be happy, however we achieve that happiness - barring robbing bank or something similar, of course? Keep enjoying it.

Sorry but I have written before that some newspapers like the NYT and the SCMP in Hong Kong are behind a paywall. It would really help if articles were posted verbatim if that's possible. Thank you.

Thanks for clarifying the issue re Super Lex. (Not sure if the name was LEK or LEX - it does seem it was run by Lex Matsuda but that would not prevent his naming the bar LEK). You are indeed correct. It was a different sort of bar. I recall the boys did often appear naked on stage but with their bodies partially hidden behind light gauzes.

I have never found any problem with guests at other hotels - perhaps because they tend to be so much bigger and its difficult for staff to spot guests. I also use my trusted atlas mostly because I sometimes want to visit friends and Japanese addresses are notoriously difficult as they are totally different from western addresses. But I'll try google maps when I return next year. I wonder if google provides all the info on the underground many passageways. Forgot I also stayed once about 5 years ago at the Gracery Hotel in Shinjuku and enjoyed it. The important thing to remember is that there are two sides to Shinjuku station and preferably you want a hotel on the east or south side.

Thanks for this. I never even look at the Channels between 1 and 220. Must see what I have bene missing.

Earthquakes are far from unusual in the Chiang Mai area as it sits atop a fault line. Looking at historical statistics since 1900, the area had 2 quakes of magnitude 6 or above, 9 between 5 and 6, 61 between 4 and 5. 63 between 3 and 4, and 263 between 2 and 3. The 6.1 quake near Chiang Rai on 5 May 2014 caused the most damage of all recent ones, with 15,000 buildings affected. Bangkok sits far from an earthquake zone and has not suffered more than minor damage from quakes in neighbouring countries. Many, though, felt the December 2004 9.1 Indian Ocean earthquake which had tall buildings in the city swaying. It was bad enough for the Banyan Tree Hotel on Sathorn to be evacuated.

I'll be even more boring (!) and suggest that what made Bangkok so special was not so much the quantity as the quality of the bars and their offerings. There were many I'd go into and quickly depart. But starting with Apollo in Soi 4 in the early 1980s with its nude dancing after around 9:30 pm, Barbiery from the mid-1980s with its two stages, 100 or so boys and a cornucopia of delights every visit, Volt sauna around the same time (was it the first with Obelisk opeing soon after?) and then the crown jewel of the original Babylon. Somewhere during that time I discovered the original Twilight and just loved the place - sleaze and all.

The old Lumphini location just off Rama IV and near Lumphini Park was great for watching Muay Thai. The new location further than Don Mueang airport is just too far away in my view. In fact virtually all the venues are off the tourist trail apart form the Rajadamnern Stadium. Great though the bouts are to watch, for decent seats you really have to pay either 2,000 or 1,800 baht and book in advance.

Looking at those excellent maps, i think I was close to the mark in suggesting the bar across from Super A was Lucky S which might later have morphed into Mama Sun before closing. Interesting that in 1996 Soi Twilight only had the Twilight Bar.

Obviously this very much depends on your budget. The first thing to remember is that Tokyo is a huge city, mostly low rise and so location is important. The public transport system is fantastic, extensive and cheap. You can get almost anywhere with the Japan Railways (JR) overground system or the various subway lines. The problem is it all closes down just before midnight and the last thing you want even to consider is a taxi home. Taxis are horribly expensive. Since you will no doubt want to be near the main gay area, Shinjuku is the obvious location for your hotel. This is the main high rise district but underneath street level there is a rabbit warren of passageways, all with shops, which means if it is raining you can easily walk to get around. Shinjuku station is one of the busiest in the world and takes a little getting used to. But here again the location is great. From Narita airport there is the fast Narita Express train which has just one stop before Shinjuku. As you would arive at Haneda there is no train service but a handy regular limousine bus service that also goes direct to Shinjuku station. If you are adventurous, there is a monorail that takes you to one of the main JR and subway stations. But I think not ideal for a first time visitor. The next thing you need is a good bilingual map. Actually atlas is more appropriate because you need lots of pages if you want to explore other parts of the city (and they are well worth exploring). I like this one because it is smaller than a paperback whereas most of the others seem to be a bit larger than a paperback. As for hotels in Shinjuku, there is one right in the middle of gay district, the City Hotel Lonestar, but the rooms are tiny - and you do not know the meaning of tiny until you see them! Basically hotel price is often dependent on room size. Business hotels are near the cheaper end but the rooms are small often without a proper wardrobe or much room for a large suitcase - but the bathrooms will be spick and span! The other point to note is that if you are visiting around the time the sakura is in bloom, rates will be higher. This is generally anywhere from mid-March to early April. The Shinjuku Prince Hotel is an older property but within walking distance of the gay area. . I have stayed at what is now named the Citadines Central Shinjuku Tokyo Hotel which used to be a Best Western. I liked it, although it is on the edge of the red light district and you may have to put up with the odd tout approaching you to go to a straight club - oddly many are African! Always book a double room if you plan to have company for the night as the single rooms will have just a small single bed. Rooms with breakfast should come in at around US$120. I have also stayed many times at the excellent Century Southern Tower which is only a three minute walk from the station and located on the top floors of a skyscraper building. Bed and breakfast is nearer $160 but well worth it. I have seen recommended elsewhere a hotel just across from Shinjuku Gyoen Park (a bit closer to the gay district) but I cannot recall its name. Nearer the time I can give you lots more information about what to see and where to go - gay and otherwise!

I once read a fascinating book The Nature of Personal Reality. Effectively it suggests that we are all conditioned by our upbringing (pretty obvious) and that the way we lead our lives is to a large extent conditioned by what is instilled in us from birth by our parents and family. If we are going to carve out a reality for ourselves, we have to work quite hard mentally to find a way to break free from at least some of these early beliefs. From a young age I wanted to get away from home. Initially it was nothing to do with being gay, but that changed. I just wanted somehow to find a job that would take me away from my home country and give me the opportunity of seeing more of the world. It took some years but eventually I found myself in Asia in my late 20s. For most of the time it was Hong Kong, a territory I knew virtually nothing about before I landed at the old Kai Tak airport. Almost instantly I fell madly in love with the place - even though it still had the old British colonial anti-sodomy law on the statute books (this was not repealed until around 1990). That turned out to be no barrier to forming relationships with the stunning young guys I was to meet there. My second piece of luck was that there were virtually no westerners in the region working in my particular field. So within just a few years I was travelling reguarly all around Asia mostly on business trips but with a free week-end in the middle. I felt I had hit the jackpot. I stil remember so many of the guys I met in various countries decades ago. Andy from Blue Boy in Kuala Lumpur with whom I spent two blissful nights in just my second year. Armando in Manila. Yusuke and a six month affair in Tokyo. Sombat in Bangkok. Yoick in Seoul. David a model in Qingdao. Jonathan from Taiwan and a five year affair. Fai whom I saw frequently in Singapore. Before that move, I was given a multitude of advice about why moving to Hong Kong would be wrong for me and the career path I thought I wanted. I admit I was also full of doubts. But it was a 2 year contract with my Board having an option on a third. In the end that just seemed a small period earlyish in my life I might lose if I found I just did not like either the work or Asia. Rarely if ever I have I found life boring. It only took a couple of years before I'd be landing again at Kai Tak and realising I was home. And Asia has been my home since then.

Not great advice when the Monkeypox vaccine is not currenty available in Thailand!

Merely for interest, Le Bouchon was a popular if somewhat dingy French restaurant on Patpong 2 that seemed to have been there for decades. Always seemed to be packed with French guys. It has now moved into the original Babylon building at the top of Soi Mozart/Nanta off Sathorn Soi 1. The prix fixe lunch is always packed. Had dinner there recently. Certainly recommended. On the other hand, I so much wish the original Babylon was still there!

I visited all three bars in that soi. I am pretty certain now that Super Lex was the much bigger bar at the end of that soi with curtians around three sides of the stage that looked like they had been taken from 1950s cinemas! Lex was a Japanese named Lex Matsuda. I have an inkling that the bar opposite Super A was named Lucky something - Lucky S or Lucky 5. I have tried to find information from on line copies of the old free magazines that used to be given out in many of the venues. The ones I can find only have Super A in that location. Something tells me that Out In Thailand which was run from Chiang Mai had maps with at least two bars in that location but it died many years ago. I did find this from Janary 1999 which might be of interest to some (quite a number of typos in it!).

Apologies. The original Barbiery of course was on Suriwong just across from Soi Twilight.

At almost ¥150 to US$1, the Japanese ¥ has not been lower since 1990. With the country now open more or less, there is no better time to visit. May bargains to be had.

Not only apply for them but pay for them as well. All debit cards will soon require an initial payment and an annual fee of upwards of 300 baht.

There was indeed. It was a bit larger and had more boys but I do not recall its being more sleazy. I believe its name was Super Lek. But there was also a far larger bar at the end of that soi that was still going in the mid-2000s and I cannot remember its name. Perhaps that was Super Lek.

Much reality TV is absolute rubbish, but it seems that's what the masses crave nowadays. The lowest of the low for me is that 90 Day Fiance Series. I am certain the producers deliberately pick individuals who are serious character misfits. Many are just plain dumb, although I caught one episode with a very handsome and sensible early 20s South American boy. I, too have a hankering for the great tv series we used to get back in the 60s and 70s. Many have already been mentioned. To the list I'd add Rising Damp, The Lovers, Porridge (all with Richard Beckinsale, a wonderful TV actor who died much too young aged just 31), Till Death Us Do Part, Fawlty Towers and some of the great solo comedy shows like Hancock's Half Hour, The Two Ronnies, and Morecambe and Wise. Let's also not forget some of the great drama series - The Forsyte Saga, I Claudius (Sir Derek Jacboi at his finest), The Jewel in the Crown (the Paul Scott Quartet which I picked up as a DVD and still watch - what a cornucopia of acting talent with Dame Peggy Ashcroft, the great Eric Porter, Fabia Drake, Charles Dance, Rachel Kempson [the wife of Sir Ralph Richardson], Tim Pigott Smith etc.), The Onedin Line, Upstairs Downstairs, Callan, The Avengers, Dr. FInlay's Casebook (the original version with Andrew Cruickshank), A for Andromeda, etc. Having emasculated its movie offerings after getting rid of the main HBO channels some years ago, many True Visions channels now are a disgrace. The main move channels show endless repeats of movies many of them decades old with gaps througout for promos. Occasionally Channel 240 in Bangkok - the Series channel - has some really good series but you have to check exactly when the episodes are being shown. Recently London Spy with the excellent gay actor Ben Whishaw, the equally excellent Jim Broadbent and the quite wonderful Charlotte Rampling was fasinating. A short series of Agatha Christie stories was interesting, the more so as in one John Malkovich played Poirot! In the last year I have even noticed True Visions is airing more and more programmes in European languages that have no English subtitles, There's a long thriller series of 12 episodes that looks interesting but is only in Dutch. Others are only in Spanish, German and the other day I compained about a movie totally in French. Each time I phone to complain I get the same old boring arguments. But they do give me a 15% discount becase those programmes do not have English sub-titles. So I just keep phoning and keep getting the discount. I recommend it!!

I haven't been to Jomtien Complex for years but isn't this the problem with most gay bars in Thailand? Most merely copy what is lready being done. Occasionally there are some who try to break the mould. X-treme in Soi Twilight 20 years or so ago - died in a couple of years having lost money. Classic Boys also in Twilight introduced the water show. But the water got so dirty and the water show itself plain boring that it reverted to type. Happy Boys just outside the Sunee complex was fun for those who liked thinks - but died. Krazy Dragon in Sunee. Good idea, badly planned, died. Almost the only one that was different was Eros which had a good run for its money. As has been written several times over almost 2 decades in this and other forums there is surely another reason for bars not mkaing profits. The fun element has largely disappeared. Anyone looking for a model which worked brilliantly need look no further than Barbiery on Sukhumvit. Of course it was a gogo bar and not a beer bar, but it got the formula absolutely right - location, boys, pricing, shows. For its first 15 years it could hardly put a foot wrong. Totally packed every week-end and often pretty much so during weekdays. Then it took a nosedive after it moved into the new building opposite Nature Boys. Totally changed the concept and it died after little more than a year. If an owner has no interest I don't see how anything is going to change. There were no such things as mobile phones 25 years ago and the boys always seemed much friendlier. If I owned a bar the first thing I would do is ban the boys from using phones when working. But then i suppose the bar would have no boys!!