Gaybutton

Last night I tried the Dolphin Restaurant with a group of friends. It's a 'hole-in-the-wall' restaurant, just off of Soi Day-Night. It's easy to find. Starting at the Flamingo Hotel or Ol

Now you know.

Are we really going to do this on this message board . . . totally change the subject of the thread? It started off as being glad the werb site is now unblocked, but has turned into a pissing contest about the Sawatdee forum, Hedda's blog, and hydras. Personally, I don't see a need for it. We all already know there is an abundance of hydras on Sawatdee. We all already know that a number of people hate Hedda's blog (and yet they're the ones who read the blog more than anyone else does). I fail to see what purpose is being served by starting the war of words all over again. As for me, I think I'll stick to what the subject of this thread is supposed to be . . . hearty congratulations for managing to get the web site unblocked. Let's hope it stays that way.

I managed to find a posting I made on my own web site last year, right after we returned from our trip. It is quite a bit more detailed. Here it is again: __________ As many of you know,I spent the past several days traveling to the Udon Thani area to witness the Naga Fireballs. I traveled with a close friend, his boyfriend, and my boyfriend. We gave some thought to flying to Udon Thani and then renting a car, but we opted to make the 10-hour drive instead. That way we could do some additional sightseeing and have much more freedom of movement than we otherwise could have had. This was the first time I've made the drive to that area of Thailand. The roads are surprisingly good. We had no problems at all. I've decided not to name the hotel at which we stayed in Udon Thani. I'll give them credit for providing spotless, large rooms with good basic amenities, a comfortable bed, and excellent bathroom facilities. Other than that I wouldn't make a special trip. They do provide breakfast with the room. It is, however, the most God-awful breakfast I remember ever having. Two ice cold eggs, not properly cooked, stale toast, badly done coffee, a slice of poor quality ham, half a hotdog-like sausage and crummy service. They don't give you a menu. You just walk in and take what they give you. Needless to say, that was the first and last time we ate the breakfast. We arrived on the night of October 16. The room was 700 baht. The next two nights were going to be 900 baht due to the Naga fireballs festival, which marks the end of Buddhist Lent. The fireballs festival was going to occur on the night of October 18, so we had a full day to see what Udon Thani is all about. I think I fully understand now why so many boys from Udon Thani, and similar areas of Thailand, choose to work in the gay bars. There's really nothing there at all except for rice farms. There are a couple discos and karokes, and a good shopping mall, with a movie theater and bowling alley, and that's about it. Of course, most of these boys can afford only to walk through the shopping mall once in awhile without being able to buy a thing. We spent the day driving around. We ended up at the Phu Phrabat Historical Park which was about 60 kilometers outside of Udon Thani. It was nice, but not, in my opinion, worth a special trip. The ruins were quite ancient and there were even cave drawings, but it's way out in the middle of nowhere. If you don't have a car, you're not going . . . We also did some shopping. We spent some time at the Banchiang National Museum. That, I thought, was worth it. It's the best archeological museum I've seen in Thailand. The restored city was quite interesting and the museum featured large quantities of ancient artifacts, especially earthenware vases. There is plenty of street market shopping just outside the museum. We came home with plenty of replica vases at amazingly inexpensive prices. The morning of the 18th, sans the hotel breakfast, we headed up toward Nong Khai. That's where the Mekong River is, and that's where the fireballs are seen. We were advised to get there before lunchtime in order to avoid major traffic problems. This phenomenon attracts hundreds of thousands of people from all over Thailand. We ended up at a Buddhist temple, right on the Mekong River shore. We were not exactly there by ourselves. There had to be at least 100,000 people in that location alone. We were told, after we got there, that this was actually the best location in all of Thailand to view the phenomenon. We arrived shortly past noon. Nothing was expected to happen before 7:00 PM. There was a carnival-like atmosphere, with plenty of food, souvenir sales, etc. We staked out our claim on some benches that seemed to offer the best view. And then we waited . . . I mean we waited and waited and waited and waited. The heat of the day was almost intolerable and there wasn't a breath of breeze at all. We were roasting alive. To add to the misery, a tout on a microphone was blaring his sales pitch, non-stop, all day. I have to admire somebody who can scream into a microphone six or seven hours straight, without a pause. Add to that the inevitable blaringly loud, constant music, and that's what we endured the entire day. The temple, at least, did have restrooms available. They were filthy squatters, but at least they were there. We almost decided that it just isn't worth going through this, no matter how spectacular the phenomenon might turn out to be, but after having driven so long to get there we weren't about to give up. Finally the sun went down. Unfortunately it didn't relieve the heat. If anything, the heat increased because all the people who came to see the phenomenon began to crowd in around us and there was no possibility of a breeze reaching us. So, we looked across the Mekong River, at Laos, as the sun set and we waited again. It was completely dark by 6:30. 7:00 PM finally came. No fireballs. There were plenty of lit up decorated barges, and fire floats meandering down the river, but no fireballs. Kids constantly lit firecrackers and shot off bottle rockets, but no fireballs. 7:30 PM . . . still nothing. We were dying from the heat, but we stayed on. 8:00 PM . . . nothing. Then, at about 8:15 suddenly a bright red globe began to slowly rise up from the river. It appeared to be the size of a basketball. Just our luck, it was partially obscured by a sign, but everyone was oohing and ahhing, and there it was! It lasted about thirty or forty seconds before it dissipated. Then, again, nothing. At about 8:40 another one rose up, from a completely different spot in the river. It too lasted about thirty or forty seconds. Then nothing again. A little after 9:00 PM we had enough. We weren't alone. Throngs of people also had enough for one day and were starting to leave. We decided to get going too. We at least got to see two of them, but this year that's all there was. We found out the next day that the two we saw were the only ones to to appear along the river at all this year. Even after we left there were no more. We were told that some years it's spectacular and some years you're lucky to see any at all. We were there during an off year, apparently, but we did at least get to see two of them. I can tell you one thing. I no longer believe that the fireballs are man-made. I just can't conceive of anything man-made being limited to a grand total of two, with hundreds of thousands of people there. It was too dark to even have a hope of seeing what these fireballs actually are or what causes them, but I am convinced that whatever they are, it's a natural occurrence. We said there's no way we'll do this again, although a year is a long time. I would like to see it some time when it is spectacular. My boyfriend's father said the year he went to see it there were twenty fireballs. Some years there are hundreds. If you want to experience it, you'll just have to take your chances as we did. We all agreed it was well worth the trip and we did have a wonderful time and a lot of fun, other than suffering through the waiting period that day. Also, we didn't come away totally disappointed. We did get to see two of them, and that beats having gone through all that and seeing nothing at all, which is probably exactly what happened at many other locations along the river. We also give the police a lot of credit. They were out there in massive numbers as people were leaving. They opened the highway only in one direction. The only direction you could go was toward Nong Khai and Udon Thani. We thought, with the massive numbers of people there that we would be hours getting back to the hotel. We made it back in 90 minutes. I have no idea what produces these fireballs, but at least the two we saw were indeed spectacular. We tried to take some photos, but our cameras are just not sophistocated enough to be able to capture anything more than a red streak, and that doesn't even begin to do justice to what we saw. Would I consider doing this again? Ask me next October.

I went last year. There are several supposedly good loacations and Phon Pisai is one of them. First, I would urge you to make your hotel reservations right now. This attracts a great many Thai people and many make their reservations months and months in advance. Once you are there, you're going to need transporation of some kind because most hotels are nowhere near where you'll have to go to see the fireballs. You also need to get there one night prior to the fireballs. You need to leave the hotel very early the next morning if you want any chance at all of avoiding the traffic jams and then getting a good spot. You're going to be sitting out there all day in blistering hot sun. Be prepared for that. Most locations have plenty of concessionaires, so food and water are no problem, but you want to be somewhere where you can get to a restroom and out of the sun. We endured that for all those hours and last year there were only two fireballs. Sometimes there are dozens, but at least we saw two of them. It was a difficult day, to be sure, but I'm glad we did it and I am thinking about doing it again.

One of everybody's favorite character actors, Jack Warden, has died at age 85. While I realize that this has nothing to do with gay Thailand, I thought people might want to know: _____ Veteran Actor Jack Warden Dead at 85 LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Jack Warden, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated actor who played gruff cops, coaches and soldiers in a career that spanned five decades, has died. He was 85. Warden, who lived in Manhattan, died Wednesday at a hospital in New York, Sidney Pazoff, his longtime business manager, said in Los Angeles Friday. "Everything gave out. Old age," Pazoff said. "He really had turned downhill in the past month; heart and then kidney and then all kinds of stuff." Warden was nominated twice for supporting-actor Oscars in two Warren Beatty movies. He was nominated for his role as a businessman in 1975's "Shampoo" and as the good-hearted football trainer in 1978's "Heaven Can Wait." He won a supporting actor Emmy for his role as Chicago Bears coach George Halas in the 1971 made-for-TV movie "Brian's Song" and was twice nominated in the 1980s as leading actor in a comedy for his show "Crazy Like a Fox." Warden, with his white hair, weathered face and gravelly voice, was in demand for character parts for decades. In real life, the former boxer, deckhand and paratrooper was anything but a tough guy. "Very gentle. Very dapper," Pazoff said. "Most of them (actors) are pretty true to the characters that they play. He was one who was not." Warden was born John H. Lebzelter in 1920 in Newark, New Jersey. He was still in high school during the Depression when he tried his hand at professional boxing under his mother's maiden name of Costello. He had 13 welterweight bouts in the Louisville area before joining the Navy, where he was sent to China and patrolled the Yangtze River. He also had jobs as a nightclub bouncer, a lifeguard and a deckhand on an East River tugboat. In 1941, he joined the Merchant Marine. He served in the engine room as his ship made convoy runs to Europe. "The constant bombings were nerve-racking below decks," he recalled. He quit in 1942 and enlisted in the Army. He was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division but shortly before D-Day broke his leg during a nighttime practice jump in Britain. "They sent me back to the States," he recalled in a 1988 Associated Press interview. "I was in a hospital for nearly a year." A fellow soldier who had been an actor gave him a play to read and he was hooked. He recovered enough to take part in the Battle of the Bulge and, after the war, went to New York to pursue an acting career. He attended acting classes and did Tennessee Williams plays in repertory companies and moved on to appear in live TV shows such as the famed "Studio One." During the 1950s his career flourished. Besides TV work, he appeared on Broadway in shows such as Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" and Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge." He had small roles in 1953's Oscar-winning "From Here to Eternity" and the submarine thriller "Run Silent, Run Deep," but his breakthrough role was Juror No. 7, a salesman who wants a quick decision in a murder case, in 1957's "Twelve Angry Men." Over the years he had a number of recurring or starring TV roles. He was a major in "The Wackiest Ship in the Army"; the coach on "Mr. Peepers"; a coach again on the small-screen version of "The Bad News Bears"; detectives in "Asphalt Jungle," "N.Y.P.D." and "Jigsaw John"; and a private investigator in "Crazy Like a Fox." His numerous big-screen roles included a news editor in 1976's "All the President's Men," Paul Newman's law partner in 1982's "The Verdict' and the president in the 1979 Peter Sellers movie "Being There." His later roles came in Woody Allen's 1994 "Bullets Over Broadway"; Beatty's 1998 political satire "Bulworth" and the 2000 football movie "The Replacements." Pazoff said Warden is survived by his longtime girlfriend, Marucha Hinds; estranged wife, Vanda; a son, Christopher; and two grandchildren.

The easiest way to give you the information is to point out the article in the laest "Sticky Rice." You can read all about it at: www.stickyrice.ws/?view=sec-PTY/sansuk

If the police are finally doing something substantial about street gangs, then I'm all for it. Gang activity has been a growing menace in Pattaya and the street gangs prey on each other as well as on "farang." Every week there are more and more stories showing up in the local media about gang activity, shootings, beatings, thefts, purse and gold necklace snatchings, robberies, and even gang-related murders. It was only a few years ago that I felt perfectly in Pattaya at any loacation at any time of day or night. Not anymore. Now you have to be very careful about where you go at night and you are placing yourself at great risk if you are alone and venturing away from well lit areas where there are not plenty of other people around. There are more and more posts about how to keep your belongings safe from theft. Unfortunately, now you have to take precautions, when you "off" a boy, such as making sure he has an ID card, that it is actually his, that he is of legal age, and that wherever you take him you make sure security or the front desk holds his ID card until he leaves, and that you either accompany the boy personally or speak with whoever is holding his ID card before he gets it back. You have to either hide or lock up any items of value. When you take the "pre and post business" shower, you have to make sure your money is with you. Only a few years ago I would never have felt a need to take most of those precautions, but today you have to be out of your mind not to. The story of what took place in Sunee Plaza sounds like an isolated incident, but news reports of late have been talking about the necessity of crackdowns on these gangs. I hope that's what's going on. The only news I have ever heard, until this, about any police presence in Sunee Plaza whatsoever has always been about a bar raid, looking for under-age boys and patrons, looking for foreign boys working in the bar, and trying to catch a "farang" engaged in sex with an under-age boy. It will be very interesting once we hear what this raid was all about.

Indeed I do get your meaning. As for "the boot," I see it fairly regularly. I even had it happen to me. One evening I had dinner at Hugh Millar's Symphony Brasserie. I parked in a spot at which there were no curb markings at all and no signs. When I returned to my car after dinner, it had been ticketed and chained. The car directly in front of me was also ticketed and chained. The owner of that car, a Thai woman, arrived at just about the same time I did. I asked her if she knew why this happened. She said she didn't know. Both of us had to go to the police station. We waited nearly an hour and a half before they finally got around to calling us. She was called first. I went to the desk with her. She asked why her car had been chained. All the clerk would say was that she was illegally parked. She insisted she was not, but she still ended up having to pay the fine in order to get her car released. Same for me. The fine was only 200 baht, so it wasn't worth making a major fuss over it, but since that night I have passed that same spot several times with various Thai friends, none of whom can figure out what was illegal about parking there. Probably nothing at all. The point is, they really do ticket cars, whether illegally parked or not. And we were not exactly the only two car owners in the police station that night paying fines. Since they do ticket cars, I hope they will extend that to double parked cars and delivery trucks, but I can definitely agree with you about one thing, Hedda . . . you better have a tremendous lung capacity if you are going to hold your breath waiting for the police to take action against those vehicles. You may be right about the reason and maybe you are wrong. Does that matter? Either way, cars are double and triple parking with impunity.

That might be true for rich people, but I'm not sure you are right. The police are quick enough to ticket cars when they're parked along red/white striped curbs. They chain those cars and won't unchain them until the ticket is paid. They also pull cars over along the highways and check for proper papers, licensing, etc, and ticket cars that they find with violations. I don't see how ticketing double parked cars would be so much different. Also, plenty of delivery trucks don't seem to mind blocking traffic when they stop to make a delivery, and sometimes they keep traffic blocked for quite some time. Certainly those drivers aren't rich.

There is an alternative. There are a number of places that rent post office boxes. You could place your important documents in an envelope and simply store it in a rented post office box. It would be inconvenient, but nobody else can get their hands on it that way.

I second the motion. I learned the hard way that no matter what you do, there will always be a few people who think they can post anything they want and couldn't care less if they are causing problems for everyone else. I don't know of any gay Thailand boards that have not experienced problem posters and ended up eventually being forced to remove posts. It comes as no surprise to me that almost as soon as you were able to get the block lifted, a problem poster shows up and tries to cause further problems. Every board has always started with the idea that there will be no censorship. It would be wonderful if it worked that way, but it simply does not. There are abusers out there and they seem hell bent to cause problems whenever the opportunity arises. Then they start screaming when they find their posts deleted and themselves banned. I don't understand why some people get off on intentionally causing problems, but obviously some do. It's sad, but that's the way it is. There are only two people who can control a board. The moderator or the problem poster. I'll take the moderator. The problem posters never seem to want to start a board of their own. They just seem to want to cause problems on boards owned by others.

This, from PATTAYA CITY NEWS: _____ Traffic Report Presented to Pattaya City Hall An interesting meeting now from Pattaya City Hall chaired by Khun Niran, the Mayor of Pattaya who received a bulky report from a team of analysts from the King Mongkot University from Bangkok. Over the last three months they have been conducting a study of traffic flow and modifications required to improve the look of Pattaya City. The report, which is over 200 pages long, began with identifying problems on Pattaya Beach Road. The report suggested that road markings were wrong and problems with Baht Buses and other vehicles who were double parking were causing potential dangers for oncoming motorists. The report also suggested that all power lines should be placed underground. They suggested that the improvements be made together and Pattaya Beach Road should be closed to traffic whilst the work is undertaken. During the closure, Pattaya Second Road will become a two way road but will revert to one-way when the work is completed. Other smaller issues such as standardization of traffic signs was also mentioned in the report which is now being considered by the Mayor. _____ It doesn't take many visits to Pattaya to see that there is a major traffic problem, one that has been escalating for years with very little being done about it. With all the new housing construction and the increase in popularity of Pattaya as a tourist destination, it doesn't take too many people with IQ's that exceed Hedda's report to see that without something drastic being done, and soon, the traffic problems will inevitably continue to grow until Pattaya becomes a traffic nightmare equalled only by Bangkok. Most of what I see in the above article has been talked about for years, especially the part about placing power lines underground. That isn't exactly something new. They are talking about working on Beach Road. I don't know what can be done about Beach Road that would make a significant difference. They can't widen the road. There's no space available to widen it. It seems to me that while placing the wires underground will dramatically improve the looks of Beach Road, I'm trying to figure out what that would do to improve the traffic flow. As usual, all these ideas are being considered at just the wrong time. High tourist season is fast approaching. I suppose, if they do anything at all, they'll start tearing up the streets during high season again, as they have done so many times before. It seems to me that much of this is a no-brainer. Instead of using the police force to spend its time looking for helmetless motorcyclists, what would be so terrible about having a group of police officers patrol around and ticketing people who double and triple park? Obviously one of the reasons people double park is because they can't find anywhere else to park. Several things can be done about that. Perhaps a city parking lot would help. Also, and this is one of my peeves, stop allowing stores to place their barriers and no parking signs on public streets. Many of these shops simply place barrriers in front of their shops so that people can't park there. Why is that tolerated? As far as I know, they have no right to do that, but they do it anyway. If they do have the right to do that, then change the regulations so that they don't. I don't understand what those barriers are supposed to accomplish. How is a car parked in front of a shop hurting their business? I don't get it. Another helpful solution would be to take advantage of already existing traffic signals. There seems to be no coordination to them. How much would it take to coordinate them? Also, the timers seem to be nonsensically set. One of my most despised traffic signals is the one located at Third Road and South Road (Pattaya Tai). Whenever I come that way from Sukhumvit Road, half my trip is spent waiting for that light. That's because it stays red forever, and then turns green with enough time for only a few cars to get through. That causes backups and major delays. And that's not the only traffic signal where this sort of problem occurs. If you are a driver in Pattaya, I'll bet you've noticed the same thing I have . . . when a traffic signal is not working, now the traffic flows smoothly. Another problem is the lack of parallel streets. There are very few and the distances between them are too far. Some of these problems seem that they would be fairly simple to rectify. Other problems are complex and there are no quick fixes. It doesn't matter, though. If it happens like most other things happen, then there will be a lot of meetings and a lot of talk, and by the time anything is actually done, if ever, it will be botched. The process of it will cause even more problems, the work will be shoddy and incompetent, and the outcome will be obsolete before the construction is even halfway finished. As you can see, I'm very optimistic . . .

Good point. Of course, if these people are suicidal, then I'd say their IQ is quite high because they're certainly doing all they can to end up dead and take a few others with them.

I'm wondering how they arrived at this figure. A great many Thai people never had more than a primary education in the first place. So, who are they testing? Are they testing those fortunate enough to be in high school or a university? Are they testing random teens, including those who never made it as far as a high school or universtity? I have never met a Thai student who has mentioned anything about taking an IQ test, and that includes my own boyfriend who is in school. He says he knows what an IQ test is, but he has never taken such a test and neither have any of his friends. Before I would want to take the figure seriously, I would want to know who is being tested. What test is being administered? Who created the test? Actually, a relatively low IQ score would not come as a major shock to me. Based on what I've seen, Thailand does not exactly provide what those from western countries would consider to be a well rounded education. I have always been highly skeptical of standardized tests. I've never figured out just what they are supposed to prove. As most of us know, in his youth Einstein would have received a low score on such a test. A close friend of mine is a teacher. She told me a story about her students taking an intelligence test. She said as she was walking around her classroom, observing what kinds of answers her students were writing, she paused and watched a student, one of the brightest she ever had, answer a few questions. She told me that he answered one question that went something like this: Which of the following does not belong on the list? 1. Goldfish 2. Bear 3. Shark 4. Whale Obviously, she was somewhat taken aback when this student selected 'shark' for his answer. She later asked him about it. She reminded him of the question and asked him again what he thinks the right answer is. Again the student said 'shark.' She said, "But why didn't you choose 'bear?' That's the only land animal on this list." He said, "Because it's the wrong answer." She said, "How do you figure that? He said, "A shark is the only one on the list that doesn't have a backbone." He got the answer wrong, but I like his answer better than the so-called correct answer. That's just another reason why I don't trust standardized tests, especially IQ tests.

But I did read your post. That's why I posted this one. More of the typical corruption that goes on. You are wrong when you say that "farang" who read Hedda's posts are rare. I think more people look for your posts than any other posts.

KOH SAMUI, July 18 (TNA) Thai commandos on Tuesday arrested two Britons, two Danes and three Thai nationals on suspicions of money laundering in a pre-dawn crackdown on their houses in the southern resort island of Samui in Surat Thani province, said a local TNA reporter. About 100 armed police, led by Pol.Gen. Dussadee Areeya, chief of Department of Special Investigation Police's Information Technology, raided houses and businesses belonging to the seven suspects at 05.45 am and apprehended all of them on court order. The TNA reporter said police had confiscated some documents found during the search. Thai police acted on the tip off from Danish police about a foreign money laundering racket that has operated in Thailand with its network in Bangkok, Pattaya, Phuket and Koh Samui. The gang members have also been involved in drugs and faced an arrest for extortion. The two Britons and two Danes were identified as Peter Watkin Jones, Crispin Paton-Smith, Peter Rosenberg and Kim Lingard Nilson; while the Thais were identified as Pramuan Somwong, a government land officer, Sam-rerng Buanak and Pratheep Muangkaew. Pramuan has been charged with government document forging. Pol. Gen. Dussadee said the gang operated through a land company jointly set up with the Thai nationals. ''Once they sold a piece of land to a buyer, they would add that buyer as the company's board member and only part of the money from the deal would change hands in Thailand and the rest transferred to overseas,'' said the police general. (TNA)-E004

Soooooooo. Just for that, I'll have to think up some more . . .

Same here. The only time I have ever been able to get them right is when I cook them myself. Well, as long as I obviously have nothing better to do, here's some more things I never see in Thailand: 1. HMO's 2. Lima beans 3. Roller skating rinks 4. Thai people who prefer to go by their given name, rather than their nickname. 5. "Farang" eating Thai food who say the food isn't hot enough and then start adding more chili peppers. 6. Thai people on the Adkins diet. 7. Graham crackers. 8. A really good traffic flow on Sukhumvit Road, in Bangkok, during rush hour. 9. Well behaved "farang" throwing water on people during Songkran. 10. Venues that charge much higher prices for "farang" relenting and changing their policy so that everyone pays the Thai price. 11. Baht bus drivers telling a "farang" that he only has to pay five baht. 12. A shop in Pantip Plaza that sells only legitimate software. 13. An Albanian restaurant. 14. A disco or karaoke that adheres to the 90-decibel rule. 15. A hospital emergency room that asks for your insurance card before treating whatever it was that brought you there. 16. A street without any cars double parked. 17. Surf boards. 18. A quilting bee. 19. A Thai grandmother reading "Gunga Din." 20. A store that sells lawn mowers. 21. A pickup truck with a rebel plate in the front and a shotgun rack in the rear window. 22. A Thai television station that shows reruns of "I Love Lucy." 23. A Chuck-E-Cheese 24. Jimmy Dean Sausage. 25. A Thai house painter who uses drop cloths. 26. Thai boys who are consistently on time. 27. Television commercials advertising denture adhesives. 28. A mini-series featuring Richard Chamberlain or Ben Gazarra. 29. A restaurant that serves really excellent, American style prime rib. 30. Weight Watchers meetings.

Or, at least I haven't seen these . . . 1. A New York style deli. 2. Fried eggs, once over lightly, done correctly. 3. Thai men wearing a toupee. 4. Thai people repaying a loan provided by a "farang." 5. Everyone at your table, in a restaurant, served the main course at the same time. 6. Bangkok taxi drivers who would much prefer to use their meter, if given the choice, rather than negotiate a fare. 7. A bar boy who enjoyed being with a "farang" so much that he refused a tip. 8. "Farang" at the beach, over fifty years old, who really look great in a thong or bikini. 9. An excellent Mexican restaurant. 10. A Polo field. 11. Thai women suffering from Anorexia or Bulemia. 12. Thai boys who go to the beach in hopes of achieving a great tan. 13, Spumoni 14. A barber shop that isn't in close proximity to more barber shops. 15. Pecan pie. 16. Trailer parks. 17. A street on which motorcycle drivers never go the wrong way. 18. A Buick dealership. 19. Here's one I do see, but not very often: Stop signs. 20. Tornados. 21. Exact change lanes at toll booths. 22. Fly fishermen. 23. Girl Scout cookies. 24. Ice hockey teams. 25. Late night infomercials. 26. A do-it-yourself carwash. 27. Garage sales. 28. A portrait of Millard Fillmore. 29. Fraternaties and Sororoties 30. A Thai person who claims to have seen a UFO or claims to have been kidnapped by aliens. Oh well . . . can't have everything.

To the person who sent a private message to me, I suggest using E-mail instead. I was not able to open your message. My E-mail address is gaybutton@gmail.com . I logged on to try later and now the message has disappeared entirely.

All that you say, mauRICE, may be the reason. It may also have nothing to do with the reason. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that it is still just a guess. In my case, other than curiosity, it is a moot issue. I see no reason to change my decision not to reinstate my web site. For many years it was fun. I really enjoyed working with the web site and the people who benefitted from it. But for the past few years the fun began to deterioriate as more and more problems developed, mostly from people, as you rightly say, with too much time on their hands and also all the problems I was having with my web host company. When it got to be a pain and a chore, rather than much fun anymore, the blocking was a blessing in disguise. If it had not been for that, I probably still would be running the web site and still going through more problems than satisfaction. Now that the site has been down for a few months, quite frankly I don't miss it. It was flattering and gratifying to receive so much E-mail from people saddened to see the web site go offline. I still receive such E-mail periodically. Many people miss it and the information it provided. I have had many people tell me it was my web site that got them to come to Thailand in the first place. I do miss that aspect of it, but it just isn't worth it to me to deal with it any longer. In all fairness, I will state that one of the nicest E-mails I received, shortly after announcing my intention to remove the web site permanently, came from Smiles. I didn't expect it and I was very pleasantly surprised by it. I appreciated his E-mail more than most because it demonstrated that while we may be bitterly at odds online, on a personal level our mutual regard is entirely different.

That is possible, but I ended the matchmaking service about a year-and-a-half before the blocking occurred. Also, none of the photos used were naked. Maybe that had something to do with it and maybe it didn't. All anyone can do is guess. Two things are certain . . . I never received any sort of complaint about it from any Thai person or organization at all. Also, my Thai attorney assured me that the service was totally legal and violated absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, I do know what "some of these sadistic quacks with too much time on their hands are capable of." The most blatant example was the person who tried to intimidate and blackmail me into banning Hedda from posting on my web site message board. Maybe he had something to do with it since I refused to give in to a nut like that. Again, whether he had something to do with it or not is anybody's guess. The only thing we know for sure is that this site, my web site, the Connect Guesthouse site in Phuket, and the Sawatdee forum were all blocked. I have read postings that many other sites were also blocked. I have never seen any evidence of that. I have never seen any other web sites that were blocked other than those four. To this very day I am still waiting for someone to submit a URL for any other web site that is blocked. So far nobody has, and I have not been able to find any. Not one. The common denominator, as I see it, is that these four web sites are all "farang" owned. I have seen no Thai-owned web sited that have been blocked.

What is even more curious is that my Internet service provider is TOT. I have not been blocked from this web site in weeks. I get right in, without having to use a proxy or anything else. Apparently the blocking is not compulsory and is up to the individual service provider. What provider do you use? When the blocking first occurred, I checked with my Thai attorney and he assured me that this sort of censorship is illegal in Thailand. The person you spoke to, Stef, told you "Sorry not good English but it is Dick Pics not good ." Considering the fact that my web site did not have any such pictures, and never did, I still have no idea why I was blocked.

This is very interesting. I too would like to know who the censors are and how to contact them. If that's something you can't post publicly, how about sending me an E-mail with the details at gaybutton@gmail.com . I would like to know who did the talking, on both sides, and whether these people speak English. I'm still not planning to reinstate my web site, although I would very much like to know why it was blocked. Some people tell me I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell, the blocked web sites are "farang" owned. I know there are many pornographic Thai web sites and they are not, and never were, blocked. If you do not want to put the information even in an E-mail for some reason, maybe we can meet personally. We saw each other this afternoon, but you didn't say anything about this and I didn't read your post until after I went home. If I knew about this, I would have asked you about it when we were together today.