PeterRS

'Tis that silly time that comes twice a year in the UK when the great, the good and a good few of the bad - along with some ordinary folk who have gone about their business with extraordinary zeal - are awarded with "honours." These are the people the British Empire continues to evoke - Member of the British Empire, Officer of the British Empire and Commander of the British Empire - all titles that should have died decades ago. Rightly, many this year have been health workers. But I will just select two from this year's long list. That Tony Blair, the Prime Minister who led Britain into the disastrous Iraq war, is not now merely Sir Tony but a member of the exclusive Order of the Garter (limited to the Queen, Prince Charles and 24 others) is a disgrace in my book. On the other hand, the actress who is now Dame Joanna Lumley fully deserves her accolade. Most of us know her merely as an actor from her time playing Patsy in the Absolutely Fabulous TV series or even earlier in The New Avengers. But she has espoused a large number of charitable causes and fought bravely for them. Born in India, in 2008 she became the face of the campaign to provide all Nepalese Gurkha soldiers who had worked for the British army before 1997 the right to settle in Britain. Many thousands had worked for the army, quite a few in Hong Kong who had effectively been left stateless after Britain's exit. Her campaign took several years and suffered many official rebuffs. Eventually she got together a petition signed by 250,000 citizens. Her campaign was finally successful. She is patron of as many as 60 other charities and in 1996 endowed a research fellowship at Oxford University for "major environmental and wildlife issues". For all these, please rise, Dame Joanna.

Gievn the number of gyms that have gone bust in recent years, I'm not sure that would be a very good business idea.

The original series was great. I remember having a nice dinner with a really lovely young Thai guy one evening when he suddenly surprised me by saying, "I'm very sorry I have to go. Tuesday is sex night!" And with that he disappeared. I was not just disappointed, I was pissed off. I had visions of his ditching me for some regular fuck buddy! It was only the next morning someone told me that Sex and the City was aired here on Tuesday nights! By the time of the second movie, I reckon I had had enough. It was a lousy movie, lousy script and not very well acted. It seems thatMr. Big is now well and truly caught up in the me too movement with many wandering fingers!

Saw it in Bangkok a week or so ago. But it was clearly not going to continue its run for more than a day or two. We saw it on an afternoon showing and there cannot have been more than a dozen people in the cinema.

So I suppose you regard those running London, Paris, Rio, Edinburgh, New York, Athens, Rome, Berlin and a host of other major world cities also as culpable of BS!

The average age of the membership of this site seems far younger than most other Asian gay chat rooms. Many of the threads seem pretty boring, but as @tm_nyc points out there is a dedicated Travel forum that has a lot of advice that I assume will be much more useful once travel opens up again.

Yes. Dechapol Puavaranukroh and Sapsiree Taerattanachai played magnificently throughout the tournament. It was just a pity that the Japanese boy, the excellent Yuta Watanabe, was hampered by injury, otherwise I'm sure the final match would have gone to three sets. But that is not to take anything away from the Thais victory. Thailand has had a World Champion before in the Ladies Singles when Ratchanok Inthanon became the top Women's Singles player in 2013 and the youngest ever to hold the title at the age of only 18. She also became the first Thai to reach a World No. ! ranking in 2016. Increasingly I find badminton a great sport to watch on television, especially the mens singles, the mixed doubles and the often incredibly fast mens doubles matches.

Congratulations to Singapore's Men's World Badminton Champion, the island state's first World Champion in any event. 24 year old Loh Kean Yew is aggressively fast on the court, very cute and with a killer smile. But he is also dead straight (and sorry this is not really a Gay Singapore subject). Maybe he'll change his orientation if he meets another cute Asian badminton player - of which there are many! 😉

This is more or less a repeat of an old post from somewhere. There is some excellent coffee in Chiang Mai grown by a hill tribe. The story of how this poor group of villages turned to coffee and now sell it all over the country is truly inspiring. It was all the idea of one stateless boy who wanted to find a way of alleviating the poverty of the hill tribes. Encouraged by his parents to get an education, he walked four kilometers every morning and afternoon to get to primary school. Then he went to a temple school because his family could not afford high school. He became the first from his village to graduate from University in Chiang Rai. After he persuaded the villagers to grow coffee, a crop the villagers knew nothing about, he was sent to Portland to learn more about coffee and coffee roasting. That coffee has been exhibited at several international events. A few years ago he opened a cafe in Chiang Mai and I enjoyed their coffee there two years ago. This TED talk by Lee Ayu Chuepa, the co-founder of Akha Ama Coffee, is truly inspirational.

Well, my partner and I saw the new West Side Story this afternoon. Not surprisingly, our views were different. Surprisingly, though, whereas I thought I would love it, I was quite disappointed. My younger Thai partner on the other hand really enjoyed it. His only concern near the start was the question he asked, "What's Puerto Rican?" I think he still has no idea why people from a small island would be going to live in New York and want to start gang warfare in the city. That, for me, is a very definite reason for Spielberg to have had more courage and brought the time the show is set much more up to date. What disappointed me? Certainly not the two lovers Tony and Maria. They were excellent actors and singers. Indeed, most of the acting was very fine. It is much more that the movie looks and feels dated. I found the dancing, the choreography and the big production numbers more convincing in the Robert Wise version (or what I remember of that movie). Indeed, I much preferred a touring version of the musical at the Thailand Cultural Centre during one of the Dance and Music Festivals about 15 years ago. That stage production kept me emotionally involved throughout. Spielberg's movie just lacked that emotional pull. My last beef was that the balance between the singing and the orchestra was just too much in favour of the singers. Naturally they have to be heard and understood. But in a theatre, the balance engineers keep the smallish orchestra at a good level. Having employed the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to play Bernstein's gorgeous score, it was mostly kept just too much in the background. I came out of the cinema disappointed.

It's one of the iconic movies of the 1960s - the Robert Wise recreation of the smash hit Broadway musical by the gay quartet of Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins. An entire generation grew up knowing many of its main songs and its updating of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" play. Yet the movie was of a time for its time. Nowadays, classic though it is, it does seem dated. So it was perhaps not surprising when Spielberg announced a couple of years ago that he would remake the movie for today's generation. Many were shocked. How would Spielberg update the story? Would it become the disaster that was his attempt at the Peter Pan story with his flop movie "Hook". Not so, have most critics announced. In fact the movie has received almost universal praise. But its opening box office week-end in North America was way below expectations. Only US$10 million taken when any hit movie should gross upwards ot $150 million. The covid pandemic and reluctance to be in a large crowd will inevitably have had an effect. But others have pointed out that the shock value of the original, despite the miscasting of Maria and Tony, is no longer shocking 6 decades later when violence is much more common on our cinema screens. Also the US bible Variety Magazine suggests that older movie goers will not be attracted to the movie having already seen the original. It further suggests the movie stands little chance of recouping the $300 million that will be needed to see it go into profit. The movie is now playing in Thailand. A few critics have gone to town to criticise the movie, especially in this long review below from The New Yorker Magazine which starts – "A rich and famous artist spends a hundred million dollars to revive a corpse with the blood of young people. The creature is still alive, but barely, and the infusion leaves it deader than when it started. This is not the plot of the latest horror film from A24 but the unfortunate tale of Steven Spielberg’s efforts to remake “West Side Story,” the movie musical about love and ethnic rivalry among New York City gangs. With the screenwriter Tony Kushner, Spielberg has attempted to fix the dubious aspects of the 1961 film, including its cavalier depiction of Puerto Rican characters and its stereotypes of a hardscrabble New York. But, instead of reconceiving the story, they’ve shored it up with flimsy new struts of sociology and psychology, along with slight dramatic rearrangements. They’ve made ill-conceived additions and misguided revisions. In the process, they’ve managed to subtract doubly from the original." https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/review-steven-spielbergs-west-side-story-remake-is-worse-than-the-original

I went to the Marriott Fair again today. Yes, the prices are only available through vouchers purchased at the Fair. Most of the hotels had no blackout dates but a few had an increase over Christmas. Not Le Meridien though. Just for info, the Le Meridien nightly price at the Fair is 3,700 baht inclusive of breakfast for 2, tax and service. Additionally there is a 500 baht daily credit for use in the hotel's F&B outlets. Pretty good deal I reckon! It's valid till March 31.

The new immigration law came into force only two or three years ago. If they have managed to circumvent the law, good luck to them.

You have to pay for the number of days you want at the fair. You then decide and book the actual dates when you are ready. You obviously run the risk that your dates may not be available if it is a really popular period like Songkran. I'd check with the hotel now if they have dates available at Songkran before paying the cash. But in these days of covid, the chances that there are no rooms available must be infinitesimal! In almost every other case, though, you should have no problem. I'm going back to Paragon today to pay for another hotel for an early May stay. You might be able to book directly at the hotel or via the Bonvoy site during the fair period, but I have not checked that.

With the omicron variant about to hit hard, one wonders how long it will take for the government will reverse this move.

It used to be possible but recent changes to the immigration laws made any form of longish stay impossible. There is a 5 years visa but you either have to be a Vietnamese expatriate, operating a business or married to a Vietnamese. There is no retirement visa in Vietnam. Even before covid the maximum stay was 3 months. If you wanted an extension you had to leave the country first and then reapply. A good friend told me of an Australian friend of his who had purchased a property and planned to retire in central Vietnam. When the Immigration rules were recently changed, he had no choice but to give up and sell his apartment. His retirement dreams down the tubes. Like Thailand there are probably a few foreigners who get away with breaking the rules, but I doubt if there are many in these times of covid.

All good news, but has the omicron variant arrived in Thailand yet? That will surely dampen spirits somewhat.

Sorry this is rather late. There is a Marriott Hotel and Resort Travel Fair at Paragon offering substantial discounts for bookings at the Marriott chain Thailand properties mostly through to next June. In many cases the discounts are 50% with add ons like breakfast for 2, upgrades and daily credit. 21 hotels have been on offer last week but that offer end today (Monday). These include several in Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Pattaya, Hua Hin, Khao Lak and Samui. From tomorrow there is another week of discounts with a different 21 hotels and resorts. Most are in Bangkok but there are some in Phuket, Samui, Rayong and Hua Hin. These remain on offer until December 21. I have checked various travel sites as well as Marriott's own site. The offers are genuine discounts of around 50%. Of course, who knows what other discounts may be offered over the next few months, but I suspect these are about as low as you will get.

Seems to me that article is full of serious holes - retirement income levels (I can just see Immigration agreeing retirement visas to two people having an income of just 71,00 baht a month!!). purchase of freehold land etc. Besides, it fails to mention that the air quality in Chiang Mai is at disastrous levels in the early part of the year when farmers illegally burn the stubble in their fields.

As bad, if not a lot worse, is the routine hazing to which new recruits are subjected. There have been several reports in recent years of young recruits dying as a result. Commanders always say they will put a stop to it. They never do. The beatings these young men are subjected to are clearly little short of murder.

There is a report on sawatdee network that the police raided Jomtien Plaza last night and ordered all bars and restaurants closed until mid-January. There seems to be no confirmation. Anyone here have any more information? https://sawatdeenetwork.com/v4/showthread.php?22524-Jomtien-Complex-Raid-December-10

In a country where almost everyone is corrupt at some level or another, this is hardly surprising. I can remember when Thailand had two satellite TV companies and there was a degree of choice (although not much then). When they merged after the Asian Economic Crisis to form UBC, the programme content was much more varied with a variety of news, sports and entertainment channels including CNN and HBO. UBC went into a joint venture with True in 2006 becoming TrueVisions a year later. To the channel list was added several which showed up to three English Premier League soccer matches on a Saturday evening. After it lost the Premier League rights in 2013 for 3 years, it started to go downhill. Now you can see the Premier League again, but you pay extra on top of the already high subscription fee. A few years ago we lost all the HBO channels, despite True acknowledging that HBO1 had a high viewership - and to my mind by far the best shows. True claimed the viewership for the other HBO channels was low and HBO would not negotiate a deal just for HBO1. Instead of HBO, we now have incredibly boring channels with mostly ancient movies and endless repeats of more recent ones. It was not long ago that the same Bourne movie was being shown on two separate channels at the same time! To increase profits it has now dropped Fox Sports and a number of sports events which used to have English commentary. If we now get them the commentary is only in Thai. Other channels have been dropped in favour of more Korean fare (not entirely unwelcome when there are so many cute guys in the series and game shows 😀). Even more oddly, Channel 240 is devoted to sometimes rather good series. But True never provides any information about which episodes are being aired at which times or which are repeats. Sometimes they are once a week; sometimes two nights a week; sometimes nightly. How on earth we are supposed to work this all out is ridiculous. And now there is a crime series on Channel 240 only in Dutch. No dubbing and no subtitles in Thai or English. As of 2010, there were only 25,000 Dutch people living in Thailand. How come they get their own programme on the country's only satellite broadcaster?

With the Winter Olympics getting closer and in the same time zone as Thailand (just one hour ahead) I am getting quite excited about several of the events. I love the ski jumping but it is the men's figure skating that completely grabs me. At the last winter games in Pyeongchang, it was not known if the Sochi 2014 Gold Medallist, the cute Japanese skater Yuzuru Hanyu, would be fit to take part. He had injured an ankle three months earlier and had pulled out of all competitions prior to the Olympics. He was not only fit enough to skate, he again won the Gold Medal. For the next Games, Hanyu may once again be unable to take part as he recently suffered another ankle injury. Hopefully he and his coach, the gay Brian Orser with whom Hanyu trains in Toronto, can get him fit enough. But the competition is getting tougher and Hanyu is not getting younger. By February he will be 28. Already a superstar in Japan with many sponsors, he will become Godlike if he could manage to win a third Gold Medal. He is the subject of many dozens of websites and innumerable social media, not a few of which speculate on his sexuality. It is assumed he is gay but those close to him never talk about it. Another Japanese Shoma Uno has been close on his heels for some years. Will this be his year? To me it's a pity that he is quite small whereas Hanyu is perfectly proportioned for a skater. Both, though, will have to beat the young American Nathan Chen, nicknamed the King of the Quads for the ease with which he executes these fiendishly difficult quadruple jumps. He is the present World Champion, a title he has won twice before, and he won Bronze in 2018. Although I really hope Hanyu competes and wins, my gut tells me Chen could well win the Gold this time around. A long shot could be the 20-year old Korean skater Cha Jun-Hwan. I reckon the area where Yuzuru Hanyu has had the edge on his competitors is his superb artistic interpretation. No one interprets the music as well as he does. There are times when it is almost balletic. His short programme in Pyeongchang was surely as close to skating perfection as one will ever see.

It would be great if someone would now score other cities in the world.

No, it's not an anniversary, although he would have been 80 next year had he lived. Merely an interest resulting from an article in today's Guardian newspaper about two exhibitions of his work - one in Paris mounted for the city's Festival d'Automne and the other at Manchester's Art Gallery in England. For gay men he was an icon, a star who wore his gayness like a light and who documented his days when suffering from HIV and the AIDS that killed him in 1994. Derek Jarman was clearly a handsome young man as shown in this 1960 photo of him in front of a self portrait at an exhibition in Watford. Photo courtesy of Keith Collins Will Trust and Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/dec/06/derek-jarman-protest-review-manchester-art-gallery-film-paintings#comment-153545682 Knowing before he was 10 that he was gay, he struggled with his homosexuality as a young man, a time when it was still illegal in the UK. He was to go on to become best known in the gay community for his films Sebastiane and Caravaggio. But rather than write about him, we can learn so much more from a television interview he gave in the year before he died, especially about how and why homosexuality became more open in Britain and how being infected with HIV affected his relationships with other people.