PeterRS

Many of the rules on prostitution and sex were devised in the immediate post war period, influenced less by the Japanese themselves and much more by the American occupiers. The Americans were in fact conflicted by their own attitudes to sex and morality. They had condemned the use of what became known as "comfort women" to provide sexual services to Japanese throughout the war. Yet the American occupiers in Japan had around 430,000 of its own troops stationed in the country and these were also young men with a high sex drive. Against this, the American view on morality was essentially conservative and its leaders did not want to be seen as condoning sex. For the Japanese there was another problem. Many of the young GIs arrived in Japan with venereal disease. So the Japanese agreed to brothels being opened but only for American military personnel. The occupying Americans' prudish attitude to sex went a lot further. Even though nudity in Japan was totally natural prior to the war with public bathing essential and whole families attending the same bathhouse (segregation was almost unheard of), this was considered going way too far in the eyes of the occupiers. Thus the Americans passed a law stipulating photos of female genitalia were banned in all media, which in those days basically meant print media. When Playboy first appeared, a small army of Japanese women used small knives to scratch out the pubic hair before it went on sale. With a series of equally conservative governments, the Japanese have never rescinded this law. It did not affect photos of males because the first gay magazine did not appear until 1971. By then, though, the rule was entrenched and was assumed to apply also to the male figure. Hence what I and most others consider the near idiotic situation of almost all gay porn for local consumption now having pixilation. What makes it so stupid is there are machines on sale in the country which will unpixilate photos! And a growing number of producers and indivduals are posting unpixilated vdos online. Some producers are starting to use utilize pixilation that is so tame it is almost unnnoticed. Yet no Japanese government will allow itself to be seen publicly as changing the law!

After my two meetings with him, I did see him omce more but did not approach him. It was about two months prior to his suicide. Friends and I were having a quick supper in the lobby of Hong Kong's Peninsula hotel prior to attending an Arts Festival concert in the Cultural Centre across the road. At one point I noticed a man sitting alone at a table by a window. It was Leslie. Clearly wrapped up in his own thoughts, he looked sad, his beautiful face then almost grey. Part of me was tempted to go up, reintroduce myself and remind him of the times we met. Then the better part of me just made me stay put with my friends. I have no idea why he was eating alone; indeed, why when feeling so obviously ill did he bother to come into such a public place where people would be bound to recognise him. But he ate alone, no one aware of who he was other that the wait staff who were all far too professional to bother him. I have before some time ago posted this PR photo for a 1981 film of three tragic young Hong Kong stars near the outset of their careers. Leslie is in the middle. On the right is Paul Cheung who became a successful radio DJ before committing suicide aged 30. On the left is Danny Chan who rose to fame a couple of years before Leslie and became a major figure in Hong Kong entertainment. He died of a drug overdose aged 35. I think Danny has the slightly better voice, although he stuck more with ballad-type songs rather than Leslie's often more edgy repertoire.

I don't think anyone's list is or will be odd. Thankfully we have all enjoyed different life experiences and it is interesting to compare those of others with one's own. Re college crushes, I could easily have put down three. I was too withdrawn at that stage to get far with two, but the third and I ended up after a year of "is he, isn't he?" concerns in a short but passionate affair. He is not on my list as we still meet up, even after all these years. As can happen, at university this one did not end on a happy note and that was largely my fault. But after a gap of some years, we bumped into each other again and have kept in touch. On my annual visits to the UK we usually meet up for a gossipy boozy lunch. We rarely talk about our college days but our gay lives since then figure prominently. He has even come to stay twice with me on short vacations to Thailand. In my working life, there must be at least six guys with whom I was close to, one for just one night, I would love to meet up with again.

That has always been a no-no as stated in all the agency regulations I have seen. Condoms are always mandatory. Did the boy agree?

I'm not so sure. The brown envelopes solution works well when a law affecting mostly Thais is in effect. When the Immigration Department is directly invoved, I suspect they will be much less effective. And if a Vietnamese is not permitted to enter more than twice a year, he'd surely be stopped at the border from entering the Kingdom on a third try.

I wonder why you feel that way. For health reasons, several decades ago I had to stay off the booze for a year. This was a time when everyone drank considerably more than they should have - and then got into their cars to drive home! Going out with friends and work colleagues, i got so tired of being constantly encouraged to have a drink. So I hit on the idea of my ordering a ginger ale as soon as I arrived at a bar. That stopped the pestering if only because it looked like a whisky soda.

Apologies for the error others have rightly noticed.

Long after the American Indians, I always assumed that as the USA was basically founded by a deeply religious sect from England seeking a place in which they could practice their own faith, a mention of God would be as essential at the time of the Declaration of Independence as it is even today in the Pledge of Allegiance - "one nation under God" and so on. I wonder how many Americans question which God, given that nearly 40% of the country is now non-caucasian. Interesting choice. I know he is a marvellous writer even though I have only read "The Swimming-Pool Library".

Although you've gone for more than three, I'd like to ask the reason for asking the initial three if "they were atheists.' Presumably you have a reason - and I expect it might have something to do with slavery.

Yes. I should perhaps have added a comma after "quite far" to make it more clear. I have had the set lunch there and much enjoyed it. The restaurant is clearly popular and has been almost full whenever I have been there.

I know that this was a thread topic 15 years ago and hope there has not been a more recent one. If there has, then do not bother to add to this. That earlier thread basically asked members to list three people living or dead - they would like to meet today - and why. The replies in the earlier thread basically included former lovers, best friends and close family members who had died as well as better known personalities. I expect the problem with those who died some time ago is that we would expect to meet them as they were then even though we have aged. I don't find that a problem. So I'll kick off. 1. The first man I fell truly and passionately in love with - a Japanese who like so many was tragically to die of AIDS. 2. Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, the massively popular gay Hong Kong singer/actor with a worldwide following who equally tragically died too young, by suicide. He is no doubt best-known around the world for two of his large output of movies - Farewell My Concubine which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, and the much grittier Happy Together which was nominated for the Palme d'Or. I did have the pleasure of meeting him once professionally. Apart from his beauty - and he was indeed beautiful - he was equally interesting and fascinating to talk to. 3. I find keeping the number down to three is very difficult. There are dozens of historical figures I would love to meet, but I think I have a debt I need to repay to my father. He was a family doctor, a profession my siblings joined. I, on the other hand, had not the slightest interest in it. While my father never did anything other than encourage me in the career I wanted, I always felt a distance from him. He tried hard to get close to me, but I had some weird determination that I did not want that. Yet he was an extremely kindly man, adored by his patients, a doctor who had no qualms about getting out of bed at 3:00 in the morning if a patient called. He had also been a prisoner of war of the Germans for five years, being captured as the phoney war started. He should have been evacuated from Dunkirk but some of the men had been transferred west along the coast to the town of St. Valery. They were supposed to be picked up during the Dunkirk evacuation but there just were not enough boats. So only a year after getting married, he was not able to see my older sister until he was repatriated by the Russians when she was five. He never talked much about the war. This was something between the men he was looking after in the camps, not for family. Thankfully my brother has spent much of the last three years finding out a great deal from the families of fellow prisoners whom he has been able to track down. Soon he will print a book for family consumption. I guess I would like to tell him I am sorry that I put up a barrier between us and I wish I had known him better.

Now I am starting to drool LOL.

A friend and I used to do a lot of bar hopping on Sunday evenings. For a time Classic Boys at the end of Soi Twilight was one of our regulars. When they put the price of drinks up, we told the doorman we would not enter unless we were charged the "usual - i.e. old - price. It always worked, at least for the first drink. We never had to pay the increased price!

While I have always regarded the amount of a tip as an individual choice, I do find the issue of tipping interesting. When I first started regularly visiting bars and offing guys way back in 1980. I was giving tips of Bt. 500, and I believe this was what most if not all offered as 'off' tips . Certainly it was easier to give one note when the alternative would have been finding a few red Bt. 100 notes! With the US/Baht peg, that was the equivalent of US$20. With Thailand's economy only recently having started to develop in the 1970s, all the bars were staffed by Thai boys mostly from the countryside where the alternative was either working the paddy fields or in village Mom & Pop stores. Bt. 500 tips were therefore very welcome. Thailand's official inflation rate has fluctuated quite wildly from 19.7% in 1980, dipping thereafter to an average of around 4% for the rest of the decade, increasing to around an average of 5% in the 1990s (the decade when the massive economic crisis hit*) , down to around 3% in the 2000s and almost 0% in the 2010s, with one further spike in 2024 of 6.08% in 2024. If we assume that the average annual interest rate was 4%, the value of $20 would now be approx. $96 (assuming my calculations are correct!) A tip roughly equal to the Bt. 500 of the 1980s today should therefore be around Bt. 3,100. This does not take into account the effects of the social order campaigns of the early 2000s, the changing face of tourism, nor the surge in the country's economy offering young Thais much greater work opportunities and thereby making bar work much less attractive. In theory at least this should result in an increase in tips! Yet I still see posts in this and another chat room mentioning short time tips ranging generally from $1,500 to $2,000. There is even one poster (not on this Board) who put forward the view that with the minimum wage in Bangkok being just Bt. 400 per day, anyone being tipped Bt. 1,000 should be thrilled! That clearly takes no account of actual circumstances, even though there may be a certain logic to the argument! Not yet in the equation is the fact that most of the boys now come from neighbouring countries which have in general less developed economies and a larger workforce still on the bottom rungs of those economies. With demand and supply in operation, assuming they are attractive to bar goers, they can make a lot more in a much shorter time than would be possible at home. So the case is legitimately made for a lower tip rate. I don't know how to factor in the cost of regular travel between their countries and Thailand nor accommodation costs. But I guess Bt. 2,000 that is often mentioned in this Board is probably about right. Just my thoughts! *Just for interest, with the aim of eventually purchasing a small apartment in Bangkok, in 1998 I converted a large amount of sterling into Baht with HSBC in Hong Kong and placed it on a year's deposit at 20% interest. At the start of 1999, I placed all that and the accrued interest plus some more sterling on a 4 month deposit at an annual rate of 16%. I estimated I made a total of just under 40% interest during 16 months. How the official rates within Thailand averaged only around 4% during those two years I fail to comprehend!

Agreed. But @Keithambrose who has criticised others for not providing sources, this time himself gives no source. So we do not know if that is in one day or over a period of time. Checking the internet, the news seems to have come from among others Yahoo News and Japan Today which state "nearly 500,000 flight tickets were cancelled" and is "spread over three days." Bloomberg is under a paywall but its headline is very clear - Japan Tourism Faces $.1.2 Billion Hit As Trip Cancellations Spike On China Rift https://japantoday.com/category/national/500-000-china-japan-trips-thought-cancelled-after-travel-warning-analyst https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-20/japan-tourism-faces-1-2-billion-hit-as-trip-cancellations-spike-on-china-rift

Please read @macaroni21's blog post which was listed in another post on another thread - Empty buildings in the Jomtien Complex - just a day or so ago with particular reference to King of College - https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2025/11/17/thankfully-not-godzilla/

I did say "when the antismoking ban was first introduced" and that was around ten or more years ago. Those were the days when I used to visit bars regularly. Solid Bar, for example, had three such large signs yet the owner and almost all the boys smoked.

FIrst I agree wholeheartedly about the King of College operating model in Tokyo, although like @macaroni21 the timing is too late for me now. And getting back to one's hotel afterwards unless it is within walking distance of Shinjuku ni-chome means a very expensive taxi. Second, I can recall only too well @macaroni21's bar model first introduced in these forums many years ago under his earlier nick. The dividing up of a bar into several sections semed such an ideal development and I am sure it would have taken off with the older westerner crowd of those days. @Keithambrose doubts if brown envelopes would be sufficient to cover a naked section nowadays. He may well be right but I'm not so sure. As long as there is no actual sexual activity underway, I suspect it could be worth trying. The entrance fee to that part of the bar could be increased a little more to cover a larger brown envelope. There is always an assumption - one I have also put forward years ago - that by concentrating on the older westerner market, Thai bar owners have shot themselves in the foot by failing to attract through advertising or other means the newer younger Asian market. Yet going back to King of College and the basic Japanese system in what is a plethora of host bars all over that country, I have occasionally wondered if I and others are in fact correct: is the Asian market really going to be attracted by Thai bars where the primary purpose is to off guys for sex? Some certainly. I see South East Asians as a very obvious market. Apart from the fact that they are all close by, most have no issue with enjoying sex with the Thais, Cambodians, Lao, Vietnamese and Myanmar boys who people most of Bangkok's bars. With the larger markets of Japanese and South Koreans, I am not quite so sure. Generally speaking, I think the cultures of those countries make it more difficult for gay men openly to accept sex with, say, South East Asian guys. This is not a racist issue so much as a cultural one. Of course it is not a universal fact, but I think as a generality it is true. It's why Japanese gay friends who visit Bangkok will happily visit a sauna, go to a massage spa, see a show in a bar and then disappear off to a disco. For many, offing is not really their thing. A section of bars where the boys are naked could, in my view, be extremely attractve to them. I am certain at the very least it would encourage them to drink more(!)

I'm saying that CNN writes for essentially largely an American audience. Lots of non-gay non-Chinese websites are not accessible in China without a VPN. It seems you did not read the article properly. It states - a source familiar with the matter told CNN that it appeared to be related to compliance issues This is stated twice. And after the fuss has died down some apps will reappear as has been the case in the past. Blued, the huge international site founded by a former Beiing policeman, has a Chinese state company as one of its investors. Would China permit a state enterprise to invest in a company which it wanted permanently out of the way? I have gay friends in various Chinese cities. They have no particular desire to march in or attend gay pride parades or even use apps to meet gay friends. That's the western way. They quickly develop their own circles of friends. If you are a one-time or just occasional visitor and you don't like the status quo, don't go. Simple as that. I am delighted to visit.

Yet another anniversary. This time the 40th since what was to become the winner of the Best Oscar was first shown, director Milos Forman's adaptation of the Peter Shaffer play Amadeus. On the face of it, the movie is about the rivalry that existed between the conventional and somewhat boring Viennese Court Composer Antonio Salieri and a young composer brought from the Court at Salzburg, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the movie, that rivalry leads to near hatred with Salieri responsible for Mozart's early death at the age of 36. Salieri then goes mad. Like several other issues in the play and the film, that is dramatic licence for there is no evidence that Mozart's death was caused in any way by Salieri. That the two thoroughly disliked each other initially is fact. That Salieri was intensely jealous of Mozart's extraodinary talent compared to his own much more modest accomplishments is mostly fact. That Salieri blamed God for giving such gifts to such a silly and uncouth boy is another truth. Mozart may not have been quite as childish as shown in the movie, but he was no young saint. He enjoyed visiting the taverns in town, he wrote scatalogical references in many of his letters and even penned a series of musical pornographic canons (a canon being a musical device). One starts with the line "Lick me in the arse, quickly, quickly!", basically an 18th century verson of "Lick My Ass". Not shown in the movie is that Salieri on the other hand was equally no saint as attested by his wife, eight children and mistress. And the rivalry can not have been that serious given that Mozart entrusted the musical education of his son to Salieri. In today's BBC website, there is a long article about the movie and especially about Milos Forman's return to communist Czechoslovakia to film most of the movie in Prague, the city where Mozart spent several years and where several of his major works received their premiere. It even suggests that certain elements in the film reflect communist society before glasnost started to tear the Soviet Union apart. The writer even suggests - Forman's aim for Amadeus can be seen as radically different from a typical biopic, and that was to use a fictionalised version of an epic clash between musical composers to allegorise the defining global rivalry of the mid-to-late 20th Century: the Cold War. Put simply, the film may have played fast and loose with 1784 because its real preoccupation was 1984 . . . The Soviet allegory can certainly be applied to Amadeus. Perhaps Forman was less concerned with hewing to biographical facts as he was with presenting Mozart as a beleaguered type of ecstatic genius who, hostage to patronage, is stifled and finally crushed by the repressive apparatus of the state. Joseph II, absolute ruler of the Habsburg monarchy, is advised at court by a clutch of prudish sycophants who undermine Mozart's achievements and smear his reputation. Whatever its loose correspondence to the late-18th and early-19th Centuries, this critique can be read as a stab at the USSR – a debilitatingly centralised bureaucracy hostile to insurgent ideas and innovation. What is true is that after Forman saw the play, he persuaded Peter Shaffer to reimagine it in a slightly different way for his film. They spent four months cloistered in a farmhouse in Connecticut where they basically rebuilt the narrative with a "fresh palette of political references." Many major actors lobbied hard for the main parts. Kenneth Branagh almost landed the part of Mozart until Foreman decided on a largely US cast (with the honourable exceptions of the superb English actor Roy Dotrice as Mozart's father and Simon Callow as the theatre owner Emanuel Shikaneder). Mark Hamill undertook several auditions for the part of Mozart. For Salieri Al Pacino, Mick Jagger, Donald Sutherland and Burt Reynolds all lobbied for the part. Both were given to relative unknowns in the movie world. It is, I think, also interesting that today when much classical music around the world is suffering from major financial constraints, the music in the movie was selected by the conductor Neville Marriner and performed by him and his Academy of St. Martin's in the Fields orchestra (St. Martin's referring to the name of the Church in London's Trafalgar Square where they are based). At a time when most movie music was performed for fees, Marriner elected instead to be put on a royalty. The film's huge success resulted in a bonanza for the orchestra which enabled it to build its own completely new rehearsal studios. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20240926-could-amadeus-be-the-most-misunderstood-oscar-winner-ever

When the no smoking law came in, some bars posted prominent No Smoking signs, even though most patrons paid zero attention. I have never in my life seen a No Prostitution notice in a gay bar!

As I understand the regulations, smoking is not premitted in any indoor bars.

Oh really? The same sort of problem an Englishman, Scotsman, Welshman and Northern Irishman experience in the United Kingdom? As a Scot, I do not like being called an Englishman, but I am perfectly happy being called a citizen of the United Kingdom.

Having visited China many dozens of times, I do not agree at all with @KeepItReal's comments. There are plenty of places for gay men to meet up and the apps can be humming, even for older western guys.

Waiting for @Olddaddy to open his 'different' bar, no doubt. How often did we hear that in the old days of Soi Twight!