Londoner

Vinapu always cheers me up! October has been my hope for some time but I fear that, even if Thailand has awoken from the pandemic, air travel may be unavailable. Please tell me I'm wrong.

Only very occasionally in my twenty-five years association with Thailand has the country had a government elected fairly by popular vote; and when it has had one, the military invariably forces it out. Food queues and reliance on charity tend to create social disorder, wherever they are.

I too have often heard the phrase, "It is sad that we cannot trust the guys we meet." The words are spoken by Thais and they are talking about us when we promise more than we deliver.

The usual response from me....Agate! P and I love it; after decades of travelling in Thailand it's our favourite. A warm welcome to gay visitors. Book direct for the best prices, not on line and certainly not on Agoda etc. Email the reception. Too expensive? Zing, also gay-friendly, is nearby.

Don't mock; sounds as if he's in with a chance of making it as Trump's successor. Black lives Matter but Liars Become Presidents.

Joking apart, if you helping the disadvantaged, you are making merit even if you don't subscribe to Buddhist philosophy. To know that you are needed and are able to answer that need gives meaning to our lives. Thais have given me so much of the decades (including but not only pleasure) that I "owe" them. Particularly P!

Don't forget the impact of shame on the part of parents who can't feed their children. A "real man" makes sure his family eats; if he doesn't he loses his sense of manliness. I recall a few years ago when I was back in Palestine that a Gaza father saw his children picking-up and trying to eat a discarded, rotten orange because there was no food in the house because of the siege. He hanged himself.

Recent news from Pattaya suggests that the distribution of free meals to the unemployed is facing the problem that the givers are struggling to maintain their generosity. I doubt whether the government will be able, or willing, to step-in make up the short-fall. Over the centuries and all over the world, extreme shortages of food have led to social unrest and Thailand has a long history of dissatisfaction with military and right-wing governments.

I've always taken the opposite view. With one guy, in particular, he came to me strongly recommended by an experienced expat but for me could do nothing. He seemed disinterested and withdrawn. He had come on time and wasn't rude or aggressive; we just didn't connect. I took the view that it may be that my style just didn't work with him....my friend was much more out-going than me. Perhaps had I been more assertive and demanding sexually and socially, he'd have pleased me as much as he pleased my friend. And after all, had I just informed him that I would that I would to him what I wanted to do, he may well have submitted. That was just not my style. I always sought a connection. I gave him the minimum of the time (1000) and let him go after twenty minutes of failure. There are two more aspects to consider; firstly, the possibility of a public scene which I'd be very bad at dealing with. And secondly- speaking as one of the alt-Right's snowflakes- who knows what his situation was? There was genuine hunger fear of losing rooms at the time of which I speak; 1000 was nothing to me. Possibly it was vital for him.

I understood that Babylon was soon to close ( I read this somewhere before the advent of the coronavirus) and assumed that it would never re-open. Accordingly, I'm rather pleased with this latest news and, while I have no desire to go there under these conditions, I am hoping that it will one day be a sauna again. To be honest, unless I need to be in Bangkok for a flight, a visit to Babylon is the only reason I stay a couple of days there.

Vinapu is right but we older guys (or at least me) fear that soon, travel to Thailand may be beyond us. The months of sanuk we are missing now may not be available.

And I'll there too....as long as the vaccination is validated in Thailand. With all the research taking place all over the world, I foresee competing claims getting in the way.

It is astonishing that this still a topic of discussion. In some ways, it is a remnant of the west's imperialism; everything is OK for us at home due to improvements in treatment, so why consider those benighted parts of the world where, for some, Hiv is still a death sentence, or at least involves a lifetime if struggle?

The efforts to find effective vaccinations for MERS and SARS were unsuccessful. It may be that better treatment may be the best hope.

Very true, assuming we can believe the figures. My boyfriend's province (Kamphaeng Phaet) has barely been touched and yet he has observed the lock down conscientiously, including not going to the hospital when I wanted him to. I suspect that maybe Thai citizens have obeyed the restrictions better than we have here in the UK. However, what surprised me the most is that the ratio of deaths to infections is much higher here. I assume the treatment offered is comparable, so why? Some have suggested that Asians have developed some sort of partial immunity following other epidemics like SARS and chicken 'flu. Possible?

My hopes and expectations change by the hour. There has to be a confluence of four issues for the trip to proceed; the level of infections at home, the flight itself (including immigration), the situation in Thailand and the availability of insurance. I'm hoping without confidence for October.

Agreed, but surely if there are vacancies and a down payment is offered we wouldn't be turned down? My concern is that I could leave LHR perfectly fit but, after twelve plus hours on board, pick -up the virus. On Monday, two hundred Thais returned home and a worrying number (twenty?) showed symptoms of fever at BKK. I can't be the only one who has often picked-up a bug on that journey.

Would you want to be responsible for another's infection? However effective today's treatment is(and people are still dying from hiv related diseases- it remains a life-changing condition . The falang visiting the gay scene in Thailand is usually the older, more experienced and often the wiser party; we have responsibilities. And the major one is to not take advantage of a guy who needs our money and so takes risks. There have been hundreds of thousandsof infected men who have never engaged in anal sex. Don't kid yourself.

I'm not sure that "revived" is the appropriate word. Patrong was dead on my first visit in 1998, alarmingly so to a first timer. I've visited five or six subsequently times-admittedly never in the highest of the high season- and have only seen it busy on Youtube. It is also expensive and I suspect that the workers may find their living expenses higher than in Pattaya and this would be a major concern for them.. I enjoy it as a tourist destination but the gay scene I find depressing. Perhaps the apps are more successful....I don't know Another issue is that Pattaya has a fair number of gay expats who play their part in the bar-scene....has Phuket? I really don't know.

There have always been more go go and host bars than the clientele can support. Even in 1995, the year of my first visit, there were bars in or near Boyztown that were almost empty and had closed by the time I returned. It was the same in Bangkok, Patong and Chiang Mai. And that pattern continued for twenty plus years. In Jomtien, of the twenty or so host bars (yes, I counted one evening) there were three or four that were always empty when I looked apart from a couple of bored hosts. A culling of bars of 20, 30 or even 40% would be very sad for the owners but not necessarily for the staff, who would find employment elsewhere, and certainly not for the punters. Everyone knows that a vibrant, busy bar draws customers, just as a vibrant, busy soi does.

There are two of us- one stuck in his farm in Kamphaeng Phaet district, and one marooned in South London- who are desperate that vinapu's prediction is accurate. It's the longest we've been apart in nearly eighteen years. October is our target month. At the moment.

I am always amazed by the resilience of the Thai people. I remember seeing vendors standing in eighteen inches of dirty flood water selling fruit from their stalls near Tuc Com. And the absence of other opportunities to make money to feed their families is likely to ensure the same outcome when the restrictions are lifted. I've been saying all along that I hope to back in October but, frankly, I'm beginning to lose hope. The South Korea incident is particularly disturbing.

I can understand that, but if you'll forgive some self-pitying, I and others are now at the stage in our lives where we haven't much more time to be with our loved-ones. I am very fit but even for me, the journey to Thailand becomes more difficult by the year and there will come a time, I fear, when it will be too much. My June trip is canceled and my October one threatened; those are experiences irretrievably lost. That's why I may be tempted into a trip later this year which, were I twenty or even ten years younger, I'd put-off until it was 100% safe in terms of the coronavirus....if that were possible.

A trial period is essential. At least six months, preferably more. I considered it sixteen years ago when the pound was worth 73 bht. I'm pleased I remained in London and continued to travel for holidays, grateful that I could afford to do so. Returning to your question, one of the major issues for me was exactly what you mentioned. I only knew one expat (he has since died) and, to be blunt, the posts I read on a gay forum (not this one) suggested that I'd never fit in. Some of the attitudes were genuinely appalling to someone who has lived in a liberal, multi-cultural city all his life. I appreciate that this was not true of others but feared that expat life may not be for me. So you are right to take into account what sort of social life you'd have in Pattaya, as well as obvious things like finance, weather, health and the political situation, remembering that if you sell-up at home, you may find it financially problematical to return if things don't turn -out well.

But what about flights into the US?