PeterRS

. . . and to start on that stamp collection all over again! What joy!

I know I have been somewhat adventurous during my career and taken a good few risks, but I have never understood why some people find extreme and danegerous outdoor activities so attractive to them. Sure, I'd love to see the world from the top of Everest, but I have seen it from a tourist plane flying a little higher and that was good enough for me. There was a documentary some years ago about two or more groups trying to climb up the horribly narrow Hillary Steps near the summit with many stuck because of the queues. When you depend on oxygen and tanks don't last too long, that would horrify me! I have watched through binoculars rock climbers in Switzerland suspended a few thousand meters up and almost horizontal. Same with extreme skiing where more than once I have also watched it start avalanches. Overcoming the fear of danger must surely have something to do with it.

I hope this is correct but I think there were something like six chat rooms at one time - and that does not include several bitchboards which suddenly appeared and then thankfully just as suddenly disappeared. As far as an owner dying of covid, was this not the owner of another site who died en route back to North America after becoming very ill in Pattaya? That I think was pre-covid.

In Japan during December and to celebrate the upcoming year, virtually every orchestra gives performances of Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony with its “Ode to Joy.” So on this first day of 2026 it is appropriate to play just a small part of it. But this is a special performance that was created by one of Europe’s most influential choreographers Maurice Bejart who happened to have been born exactly 99 years ago today. Bejart decided the Symphony is so universal with its themes of brotherhood and unity it should include dance as an essential visual element to add to the symphony orchestra, four soloists and large chorus. So he created a version to be performed in the round having added 90 dancers that was first performed in Belgium in 1964. Bejart called his “a Ninth Symphony for the 20th century.” The packed audience gave it 16 minutes of applause. Since a performance requires around 300 artists in total and a very large stage, Bejart’s version has only rarely been performed. In 2014 to mark the 50th anniversary of its creation, it was given a unique performance in Tokyo. It was unique in the sense that it involved not just Bejart’s company which is now based in Lausanne. Never before had it co-operated with another dance company. For this performance which took almost three years of preparation, consultation and finally rehearsals, the Tokyo Ballet company (with its fabulous looking male dancers!!) was integrated fully into the performance. That company also just happened to be celebrating its 50th anniversary that year. This is just a short three-minute excerpt from the start of the second movement with dancers from the Bejart Ballet – yes, the gorgeous Japanese male soloist is part of that company, not the Tokyo Ballet. To me, it is extraordinary not only that Beethoven was deaf when he composed the symphony but how in his dramatic interpretation Bejart has captured the humanity of Beethoven’s masterpiece. You can just make out Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra raised behind the dance floor. For those interested, the full performance with a prologue can be seen here. The Symphony proper starts at 8’00” and the boys and girls of the Tokyo Ballet are featured in the first and last movements. Just click on the youtube link.

I believe the one-way way ticket on the luxury Eastern Orient Express train even with its gourmet meals and stunning cabins is cheaper than the Ayutthaya converted rice barges. Maybe something else for @Olddaddy after his next stay at the Capella

As far as I am aware, there was no report about damage in Chatuchak or any other low lying area in Bangkok - only the shaking of some buildings. The worst effect was the destruction of a high rise that was not complete. This was the subject of an enquiry into poor quality of building materials.

It was never closed! I assume you are referring to the mega earthquake near Mandalay in Myanmar which did affect Bangkok, but very little in low-lying districts. Bnagkok does not lie on an earthquake fault line, whereas Chiang Mai and the north does. I added some photos to my earlier post which may or may not be of interest.

For those interested in river cruises and with a large wallet, there used to be wonderful 1 or 2 day/overnight cruises from BKK to Ayutthaya on a converted rice barge. These included splendid dinners and breakfasts, accommodation in suites with queen-size beds, tour of Ayutthaya and return by limousine. It was spectacular. The one I arranged almost 20 years ago was run by the Marriott Riverside Hotel. I know the hotel was taken over and understand that is now the Anantara Riverside Hotel, but am not certain. Looking at the internet there seem to be several companies operating this service. En route are two spectacular sights. The Royal Palace at Bang Pa In and the relatively new "Arts of the Kingom" Museum with a host of utterly stunning objects. It was first opened at least 10 years ago when it was accommodated in the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall. Intended merely as a one-year Exhibition, it proved so popular it was retained in that building for some years before now being housed in its own special Museum near Ayutthaya. After i had seen it, I always took visiting friends there and they absolutely loved it. The exhibits really are quite unique. All photos are taken from the Arts of the Kingdom website - https://www.artsofthekingdom.com/about-us/ The Pavilion at the Bang Pa In Palace

I suspect that the majority of readers based in or visiting Thailand are in the older age group and naturally advancing age starts to play a role in contributions. We are not all spring chickens like @Olddaddy . Some of those who are retired may have friends who are not members of this Board and consequently we do not hear when they pass. Fortunately some new younger posters have become active. Hopefully more will. I have written before that it is, I think, somewhat extraordinary that many gay expats living in Thailand do not know of the existence of this Board. None of my gay friends had heard about it until I mentioned it and none has since bothered even to read it. In these days of social media, I sometimes even wonder if chat rooms like this have a future. What do others think?

I can recall a time in Hong Kong the early 1980s when I posted an air mail letter to my mother in the provinces of the UK at lunchtime on a Monday and received her reply on the first mail delivery on the Saturday, just five days later. We all know that postal services almost everywhere have been cut back massively since then and become a great deal more expensive. Now the end of a state run postal service may be on the horizon. From Tuesday next week, Denmark is stopping its 400-year old postal service and will cease all mail delivery. Since July it has been dismantling all its mail boxes and selling them off to willing buyers. It will, though, continue to deliver parcels. Apart from costs increasing, the Denmark Postal Service points out that the service delivered 90% less mail in 2024 than in 2020. This compares to a drop in the USA of 50% betwen 2006 and 2024. In future, Danes wishing to mail letters will have to do so by dropping them off at special kiosks in shops where they will be handled and then delivered by a private company, no doubt at greater expense. The company will collect letters from individual homes, but payment has to be made electronically! While the new arrangement will affect only a few people, the elderly will clearly be disadvantaged. The CNN article points out that almost 2.6 billion people around the world remain offline. So the new Danish system is likely to be adopted by only a few countries. But it may herald the longer term future of mail deliveries. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/30/europe/denmark-postal-service-letters-intl-scli

He is also fabulously wealthy. It was rumoured he also saved Margaret Thatcher's bacon in 1985 when sterling was collapsing against the US$ due to the very high value of the $. Sterling fell to $1.05 in February and was rumoured to break below the 1 to 1 level. Rumour also has it that Thatcher persuaded the Sultan of Brunei to purchase a very large amount of sterling to stop the slide. I have heard this several times, but cannot find confirmation. If true, the Sultan would have made a very handsome profit as sterling started to rise quite significantly. By June that year it was already at 1.28.

Indeed it is almost 2026! And indeed in Brunei you can be stoned to death for being gay! Fact! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-47769964

I can attest that the Thai authorities do import teachers of English for short periods - athough how much good that does obviousy depends on the teachers and how they are selected. I only had one experience meeting up with one. I was at Siam Skytrain station about to visit Paragon. A large middle-aged (I guess) African American lady in a dress that was clearly too thick for the heat was looking around and clearly very confused. I asked if I could help. Frankly, I found it a little difficult to understand that she was trying to find Paragon but she told me none of the staff seemed to understand her. I asked her to turn around as Paragon was just there. In thanking me she told me she was from Louisiana, it was her first visit to Thailand and she taught spoken English!! Turned out someone at her school in the US had asked for volunteers to spend theee months teaching in Thailand. She though it might be fun. She was clearly well-meaning but I felt sorry for the Thai kids who tried to decipher her very southern pronounciation.

I find most of the Asian men's skaters fascinating to watch. Amazing bodies, many with sweet faces, cute little butts 😀 and amazing athleticism.

Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan. And where did you find that little nugget of untruth, I wonder? Gay sex in Brunei can be penalised by death by stoning. This law came into effect in 2019. Homosexuality was already illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. If you are prepared to take the risk, I guess you might have some small chance of weaving your head to avoid some of the stones!

Just one more vdo. Last night in Thailand True Visions showed the Finals of the World Skating Grand Prix in Nagoya earlier this month. The 21-year old American Ilya Malinin skated what is by far the best Free Skate in history with a programme including no less than seven quad jumps, one of which was the first time in international performance of the most fiendishly difficult of them all - the quadruple Axel. It was truly a jaw-droppong performance which massively outscored all the other competitors. If he skates like that in the Olympics, the Gold is definitely his. Sorry the commentary is in German. You can see the description of each jump after it takes place by looking in the middle of the box at the top left. The quad Axel is the second jump. As the German commentator says "unglaublich" - "unbelievable!"

Although I have watched great skaters for years, I have never been able to marry the names of jumps with what actually happens on the ice. Nor with the speed at which they skate can I tell if I have just watched a triple or a quadruple jump! I had no idea how commentators tell a Lutz from an Axel from a Salchow or a Toe Loop and so on. All I knew was the Axel jump is the only one where the skaters take off facing forward. In all the others they start the rotation going backwards. Going through various videos last night I finally found the answer. Even with the detailed descriptions, it's still not easy but slowly I am finding out. For those interested, this is the vdo clip -

I never used to take much interest in the Winter Olympics until those held in Nagano in 1998. Even then, what sparked my interest was less the various events but the Japanese cross country skiers. I thought they looked quite wonderful! In 2026 the Games take place in Milan and Cortina in the amazing Dolomite mountains throughout February which will have me in front of the television most days. My favourite is now the men's ice skating. What sparked that interest was another Japanese, the amazing 19-year old Yuzuru Hanyu who took the Gold Medal in the Men's Figure Skating Competition in Sochi in 2014, the first Asian to win Gold. Like many, I began to follow his career. Like quite a few other Asian skaters - and those of Asian descent who skate for other countries - he was not merely a superb skater, he is extremely good looking! And then he did what no other men's skater had done for decades, he took the Gold Medal again in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games. His short programme (men's skating has a short and a long programme) in 2018 was stunning, skated to the music of Chopin, broke the world record for points. These programmes are now increasingly packed with triple and quadruple jumps - feats that not so many decades ago were considered impossible. A day or so after the winners have been announced, the skaters perform an Exhibition programme. Rather than include that 2018 short programme video, this is from that Exhibition. Apart from one single and one triple jump, the rest is pure artistry, an extraordinary tribute not only to that artistry and how he interprets the music, but on this occasion it was dedicated specifically to those hundreds of thousands who had been so badly affected by the horrendous 2011 tsunami off Japan's East Coast. Hanyu comes from Sendai which was very seriously affected by the tsunami. During his amateur career he went on to skate in many events to raise funds for those who had lost almost everything. Since turning professional in 2022, he has personally donated US$3 million and continues raising money through guest appearances. He is massively popular in Japan. Each year he produces his own ice show, again specifically to raise funds. It has often been suggested that he is gay. All we know is that he announced on social media in early August 2023 that he had got married. And then the shock. In mid-November he announced he had got divorced! He never gave any information about his partner. The "maybe gay" label will inevitably stick with him, partly because in 2014 he had moved to train in Toronto with coach Brian Orser. A former Olympic skater, Orser was openly gay with a partner. Rumours also flew around that he had formed a relationship with the Mexican skater also in Orser's training camp, Javier Fernandez. Whatever the gossip, his artistry has been universally praised worldwde. In 2022, the New York Times said, "we may never see another skater like Yuzuru Hanyu." In 2024 ESPN listed the 25 greatest Olympic sportmen of the 21st century. Hanyu placed #10. He has now reached the status of legend. Even though we will no longer see him skate at the Olympics, there are many others close to his skill and artistry, many of them Asian. Will another Asian win Gold this time?

Tokyo has so many delights to offer. In over four decades of visiting the city and two years living there, I never found any place as complicated as Re:Born. Finding an escort in one of the more regular escort services is really so easy. On the other hand, the city is so big and public transport so incredibly easy as long as you aim to be home before it closes just before midnight, there are obviously so many out of the way gay places that most foreigners know nothing about. Inevitably finding these can be more difficult and as @joizy's post mentions there can be difficulties to overcome. But for those prepared to give it a try, occasionally little gems can be found. I never used rooms in the venues. Always had boys come back to my hotel - and they always arrived exactly on time.

Agreed that the driving distance makes it seem considerably further than it actually is. As the crow flies, it is quite a thin strip of land. And I agree on the concensus re the weather on east and west coasts. But it's been some years since global warming has been changing weather patterns. I experienced daily rainfall four times visiting Phuket in mid-December spread over a number of years starting around 1995. I am glad you were luckier.

You do realise I assume that the distance between the east and the west in the south of Thailand is very small. Monsoon rains that quite regularly hit the west coast at the end of the year do sometimes affect the east, although the amount of rainfall may differ considerably. Your experience differs from mine.

When the whole point of a family holiday is sun, sand and swimming, rain is inevitably a considerable disappointment. People do nor fly thousands of kms for rain!

I wrote in an earlier thread that I stopped going to Phuket in December many years ago because the last time it rained every day. GIven what seems like the increasing possibility of monsoon rains at this time of year, I fail to understand why people fly in from places like Europe for family holidays.

My one concern is having photos taken as I have no idea where or in what format they might appear. Personally I think photography in or near bars and restaurants should be banned. Sadly, with most Asians desperate to tske photos of every single dish they eat, that just won't happen.

Quite agree. But if a spa only has four boys on the premises - and I have both experienced this some years ago at Senso and read about it more recently in this forum - fitting the specification surely does not always work.