forrestreid

I tend to suffer from this lot. Mainly, I think, because I'm poor at sleeping on flights. I fly from Europe to Thailand and usually get flights that leave Europe late in evening arrive that Thailand in the late afternoon. When I arrive I feel really wrecked because my body thinks it's early in the morning European time after having very little sleep the night before. What I find is best for a quick adjustment, although it's not that easy, is to try and avoid having much if any naps during the daytime Thailand time. It is hard for you to do this as your natural rhythm, if you have come from Europe, make you think it's bedtime around 5 or 6 PM Thailand. But if you don't avoid daytime napping, my own personal case,I would find it very difficult to sleep at Thai night time, and it would end up being a week by the time I adjust. Your strategy should also be based on the amount of time you will be staying. If you are only staying five days or less I think It is hardly worthwhile make a huge effort to get in synch with Thai time. In that case I would probably have middays naps to make sure I have enough energy to enjoy my time in the country, as the strategy I describe above, while it does get rid of jetlag quickly, does mean you have two were three days at start when you are like a zombie half the day. For some reason you often find articles about jetlag in the newspapers suggesting you take naps to help you deal with it, but I think most people who know what they are talking about tend to agree with my suggestion. This is all with the caveat that there is a subset of people who can nap without it really affecting their night-time sleeping - they just get a burst of energy from it - and if you are part of that subset nap away, but for most people I think my advice holds.

A problem with any discussion board is that you will always have contentious topics. Sometimes it seems that the more particular and limited the list of interests the board covers, the more bitter the disputes - the integrity of small differences. There just has to be an acceptance amongst posters that there will be differences and an ability to accept them with good grace. For a board such as this, relating to topics of interest mainly to gay tourists in Thailand, to be useful and attractive to posters, it should have vigorous and informed discussions. That is why I think was a suggestion that was made in the recently locked thread that people refrain from discussing what type is staff was in bars, such as whether the guys were fem or masculine or muscular, and so on, is misguided. This opinion is mistaken in my view because the bars with offable boys in Thailand often do specialise in a "type" of guy and what type of guy is available in what bar is an absolutely legitimate topic for discussion in a board such as this, in fact it could almost be described as a principle raisin d'etre of the board. It can be a contentious topic I will admit, but it can be discussed politely if posters have a bit of cop on. As a previous poster said, the best way to deal with rude and obnoxious posters is to tackle them head on, with a suspension or banning, rather than attempting the Sisyphean task of trying to curtail a natural discussion point on the board.

By the way, did you say that a mamasan is just back working in Pattaya after having spent a few years in a Buddhist monastery? That must be quite a transition to say the least!

Any particular reason why the Khmer and Lao guys prefer covering up? Les developed physiques or are they just shy?

There is a difference - I think the guy is question was quite goodlooking, but I hate the tattoo. You are being a bit over-sensitive to get upset I think, considering as it is a photo of someone else. If I showed someone a picture of an outfit I wore to to a party, and they commented that it was hideous, I might take offense, even if I acknowledged it was their honest opinion, as you just cannot say that to somebodies face. But if they commented unfavourably on the outfit of a friend of mine in a photo, I wouldn't mind, as long as the friend was not in earshot, as it is generally accepted in society that critical comments about third parties are allowed in polite discourse.

I remember once a few years ago when I arrived in Don Muang (coming from Bali), I decided to use the shuttle to Swampy to get a taxi from there to Pattaya (to save a few quid). I thought it was free to anybody traveling from one airport to the other, but only when I was about to board I realised that you were supposed to show your ticket. In a rather forlorn hope (seeing as I was not going to Swampy for a flight) I proffered the printout of my Bali to DMK flight, which I had not got round to dumping. Happily they took a glance at it and waved me on. Happy Days! So you could try a similar ploy, if you have a printout of a ticket arriving in Swampy, but dont blame me if they have tightened things up since that and you get thrown out on your arse...

Is there any massage place in Pattaya that is good for B2B, does anybody know?

Quite the player, is Stickman. Imagine the majority shareholder blinked fairly quickly when he thought about what result would be if Stickman decided to retire. If I was the majority owner, I would be trying to move to a situation where a revolving list of people did the column each week, instead of one man. We shall see.

One thing that struck me about the report this week was the bit about how he claims there was basically no non-compete clause on the sale deal. So, after selling the site for a lump of cash, he can, any time he is unhappy wit the pay or whatever, just leave and set up his own site the very next week? Seems like a bit of a poison pill for the site, as it is so bound up with his personality, if the majority owner gets in a new guy to do the "New Stickman" column on the existing website, would people read that, or desert it for a new website run by the actual Stickman? I feel the new majority owner was perhaps badly advised when purchasing... That is of course if you can believe any of it!

It would be a pity to see Stickman go. Although he refused to cover the gay scene at all (unlike, say, the Bangkok Eyes "Midnight Hour" Site) he provided probably the most reliable commentary on the straight nightlife scene in Thailand. Obviously he had massive biases towards his own advertisers, it but I often found it worth reading - especially the "news snippets" links at the bottom of his weekly postings. Like above posts, I suspect it may be an elaborate ruse to maintain his current level of compensation though! But it is obvious that he is increasingly unhappy with the majority shareholder on the site. Two weeks ago he posted a column based on an interview with the English investigative reporter Andrew Drummond. This was later pulled at the behest of the majority shareholder. The following week, Stickamn reported it thusly: "....One person was not happy about the article and used their not inconsiderable influence with the majority owner of this site to get the article removed. That column would now be last week’s news and would be all but forgotten about, but now the whole kerfuffle of removing it shines a bright spotlight on who wanted it removed and why..." I remember thinking at the time that it was surprising that Stickman had no compunction about stating that it was some person "who had influence" with the majority shareholder who got it pulled, rather than saying it had been pulled due to "legal advice" or similar. And then, in this weeks column, what is the first email from a reader that Stickman features ? An email (I would guess originating from maybe somewhere in New Zealand area?) which criticised the censorship, and adds "It is clear from your comments about it that you regard the person responsible as an idiot who has little understanding of how the on-line world operates". Stickman clearly has little respect for the majority shareholder for whom he now works. But he is fairly indispensable for the site, (I would imagine that without the weekly column, the readership of the site would fall off a cliff), it is probably rather silly of the majority shareholder to be threatening to cut his pay. We shall see what happens..

I would understand from that statement that there was no compulsory cover charge for a guy to sit with you, but that does not mean that wont be bothering you to buy " dink for boy" every two minutes. It depend how much of a brass neck to brush them off you have, I guess

Oh, Christian, you are such a fact-obsessed person, you would put Gradgrind to shame! I am sure there is no shortage of small factual errors in the Osborne book, I wouldn't dispute it, but what he was trying to get at was the SOUL of Bangkok. It has to be read and appreciated with that in mind. [flicks hair and sighs theatrically] But it takes all types to make the World, I suppose (I can be the most nerdy guy going sometimes myself, particularly when it comes to transport networks), so here is a web page that is more likely to gladden your heart: http://www.nomadicnotes.com/southeast-asia-rail-map/ It is a map created of all the railways that are proposed currently in South-East Asia, and what the network will look like after they are built (in the unlikely event they ARE all built). Cool to look at at think about the day when you get get a train all the way from Yangon to Saigon, via Bangkok... The rest of the website, about travel generally and Vietnamese travel in particular, is well worth a browse too.

You could make a good argument that united Ireland would have been a lot MORE likely to have occurred by now if the Good Friday agreement had been rejected by Ulster Unionists, rather than accepted by them (on the basis that there would have been no temporary cessation in the constitutional crisis there, which would have pushed out the Westminster government quicker). Either way, I very much doubt that a united Ireland will happen before "Scoxit". I am curious as to what makes you think that the vote against independence will be larger than last time? I know financially, things are a bit worse with the dip of oil prices, etc, but I think psychologically the Brexit debacle will help the independence cause. Last time, the EU issue was a plus for the Union - with concerns of Scotland having to apply again for membership of the EU, and the argument that the only way to stay in the EU was via the Union etc. Now that whole argument is neutralised – in fact people will be heading into the unknown either way, which will cut down on the anxiety generated by the whole "leap in the dark " factor.

Hello Bryan, Welcome to the board. I didn't realise you would be reading the comments yourself when I wrote them, you picked a nice time to join the board! Glad you took my comments in the fair-minded (albeit blunt) way they were intended.

I think it was fairly clearly implied by your "get off the reservation" comment at the end. I should have said "what the OP implies" rather than "what the OP states" I suppose, but it's a pretty minor distinction .

Another posting on here recently mentioned the online Stickman column. As a sometimes reader of it, usually I find the best thing in it (for the gay reader anyway) is his gleanings from the newspapers of Thai related stories. But one he missed was an article recently in the New York Times by Lawrence Osborne, talking about the neighbourhood of Bangkok (basically middle Sukhumvit) that Osborne is currently living in. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/travel/bangkok-thailand-city-of-spirits-culture.html?_r=0 It is called "My Bangkok - City of Spirits" and he talks about walking around the city and visiting his favourite haunts, especially late night bars. It is well worth a look. It may be in rather purple prose, but for somebody who lives outside Thailand, like me, and visits as a tourist, it really caught the exotic feeling of modern Bangkok (including the bits they are trying to kill off, like street drinks carts) and will certainly arouse nostalgia in many forum readers. Gave me some ideas for bars I might wish to try when I next visit too. Osborne wrote a whole book about an earlier period he spent living in in Bangkok, called "Bangkok Days", which is worth a look if you like style of writing in the article.

Actually, contrary to what the OP states, I think Stickman is actually fairly regularly read by quite a few posters here, including myself, I had actually read this article with interest before I saw the OP. As regards what i thought of it, basically Nirishguy beat me to it, was going to post the same. Flowers seems to have had a slow burn strategy up to this, and made clever use of social media (the business he started out with) to get people into his new bars, carefully supervising management, making sure the have the right farang staff, etc Now he seems to be rather suddenly speeding up, if he really plans to buy a bar a month, he will find it nearly impossible to keep ensuring the quality of staff, never mind keeping a social media presence for them all. The impossibility of expanding quickly and keeping up quality are why most big chains you have heard of, like MacDonalds, that want to expand fast go for franchising rather than owning. He seems to be going for an all-or nothing strategy with the bars, buying them up like they are going out of fashion, remortgaging his house to do so, etc. Either he has spotted that the bars in general are undervalued at current market and plans to quickly expand and sell off in two or three years (perhaps a clever strategy, if that is his game), or else he has spotted a magic formula to enable him to expand fast and maintain quality (more unlikely, imho) Personally, I suspect he will burn brightly and burn out quickly, like Nirish says. But unlike Vessy, I dont know him, so this is only me speculating. I have to concede to him that he operates the biggest and best straight-orientated Pattaya chat forum in Pattaya-Addicts, so he is obviously no fool, and does seem to genuinely have a good reputation. However, if I was thinking of investing in his business, that interview made him seem to have a rather "manic" personality, which would concern me a bit. But best of luck to him anyway

Looks like a fairly comprehensive itinerary. There is a Youtube guy named Harald Baldr who followed a similar route to the northern route above, on a motorcycle last year. It forms a good overview of what such a route is like. He did 12 episodes in all, and collated them in a Youtube playlist called "Unseen Thailand Tour" View the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIvXbONfyd8sPOJED4y-GcKMledkK9TpW He is a bit of an arrogant straight guy, but he also quite good-looking and is fond of taking off his shirt, so that makes him a bit easier to like, lol. Worth viewing if you are thinking of touring some of the back roads of Thailand.

Hi Numazu. What a great post! That was quite a sexy story with the tall guy. The set up like a porn story I have not been posting in this thread over the last few weeks, even though I have been reading it every day, as I was waiting till the end to congratulate you, but I couldn't resist after reading that posting. And as well I was afraid that I would have forgotten about some of the gems on this tread, like the abs photo of ShanBoy (I had to revisit that post over a few days to make sure I had the exact contours of his body memorised...) or those photos of the balloon trip over Bagan. This has been a true classic thread, it has really put a longing on me to visit Burma now, even though I was thinking of Vietnam as the side-trip to my next SE Asia adventure, and you cant say better for a trip report than it makes people say "I want to visit there too!"

Like Hutchison above, I think it means S for Sadist, and M for Masochist. The "soft" things just means that they only do some light S&M Therefore, "Soft S" means the boy would be willing to take the dominant, sadist role in some light S&M. and "Soft M" means that the boy would be willing to take the submissive, masochist role in some light S&M. So one would expect that, as abidismaili found, that the Soft S designation would be a lot more common that the Soft M.

Have passed it many times, but never stopped by. I think I should maybe add it to my list of establishments to visit on Soi Twilight. My mind is usually on other things than a quiet beer when I enter that Soi, perhaps I am missing out.

Hi all, For those in the UK and Ireland you might be interested to note that a new BBC documentary series starts on BBC Two tomorrow night. Focuses on the natural world, but a bit about the people of Thailand too, I believe. Link to the web-page about the series here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08819cv Will probably be available on Youtube or the like a few days later- they usually are.

Well, since you did ask for constructive criticism... One think that was missing was some pictures of the people you came across in your travels - particularly the cute guys. Now I don't mean so much the massage guys, etc, you had sex with as I know that many guys are shy about posting such photos for various reasons (although the guys who do post them, such as Vessey, are much appreciated). I mean more the cute guys you encounter such in a non-sexual context such as tuk-tuk drivers or moto-drivers or waiters. In your account you mentioned the cute tuk-tuk guy with the holes in his jeans and the handsome moto driver in Preah Vihear. I had to imagine what they looked like as, but sometimes imagination might not be as good as reality. A photo would have been nice. All the photos in your account added a lot to it, but I dont think there was a human in any of them.

Fantastic trip report Vinapu! I myself was in Siem Reap two years ago, and it brought back many memories. Liked the way you combined seeing your desired sites with leaving plenty of time for the all-important reviving massage after... The places on your "must catch up with list" correspond to a considerable degree with my own - Preah Vihear, the West Mebon, Phnom Krom. But I hadn't been aware of Samnor Preah Kuk. That has now been added to the "catch up" list. Well done.

Thanks for posting those, bucknaway.