PeterRS

Ha! I thought you are not a church-goer.

I never stayed at the hotel, only took my guys to the rooms off the garage on the ground floor. Easy and quick. But certainly no ceiling mirrors that i recall. In fact I only recall one short time hotel with ceiling mirros but that was definitely somewhere off Sukhumvit - and a good 30 years or more ago. I sometimes miss the Japanese short time hotels. many with circular beds and mirrors both on the ceilings and the walls. They all seemed set up to give you a fun and exciting time with your partner.

I am sure he has pockets in his pants and you can have a bit of fun as you try to find something in one.

When I was visiting Bali regularly in the early 1980s, I based myself in Ubud, a town where art had flourished for many deacdes. There were artists working in other towns but it was Ubud which inspired a number of western artists to visit and make their homes there in the 1920s and 30s resulting in the development of a more naif form of painting. The main one we know of today is almost certainly the German painter and musician, Walter Spies. After a spell living iin Java, he moved to Bali in 1927 and spent most of the rest of his life there. As his art grew in popularity, he formed a co-operative of young Balinese artists who continued his style after he was forced to leave the country and his ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in 1942. Spies was openly gay. In Bali in those days although homosexuality was illegal, it openly flourished in and around Ubud and other parts of the island. It was only towards the end of the 1930s that the Dutch colonial masters decided to more strongly enforce the law and Spies was arrested resulting in his deportation. Using daily Balinese life as their subject, the works of the cooperative formed by Spies were popular for many decades. In Hong Kong I had five Ubud paintings on walls. Here in Bangkok, just one. What I had not realised until today after reading an article in the Guardian about an art exhibition in England is that art in Bali had major developments as the century was coming to an end. This particulr exhibition focuses on paintings by the female artist known as Murni (I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih) who had died of ovarian cancer at the horribly young age of 39 in 2006. Her work retains near absolute simplicity as she paints with an abandon of form. Her later works are amost entirely devoted to sex. Through sex she shrugs off the constaints of Balinese daily life and society. As the article states - "Murni’s later work stands apart though. The paintings are now infinitely more brazen, a total embrace of desire and sexuality. A pig in a bra puts on lipstick. High heels – sexily feminine and absolutely lethal – kick and stomp. Vaginas are worshipped by kneeling figures or penetrated by tentacles; breasts are bound by wristwatches; couples hump and writhe; everywhere you look there are cocks throbbing and piercing and erupting. They pop out of cups, wrap around women’s bodies, nudge at orifices. It’s all desire, totally unbound, totally free." There are none of the norms of Balinese society here. She wanted freedom in her life and as an artist. Her works are now to be found in a number of pretigious galleries in New York, Chicago, Sydney, Singapore and elsewhere. Two of her works - Images: Gajah Gallery & The Estate of I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/sep/29/i-gusti-ayu-kadek-murniasih-review-a-vivid-testament-to-a-life-lived-hornily

As a youngster my golf mad mother did her best to teach my brother and me how to play the game. We did for a while, but neither had much interest. Nowadays my only interest in televised golf is the biennial Ryder Cup which pitches 12 of the best of European golfers against 12 American counterparts. This is a three day event consisting of two days of foursomes and the last when all 12 are singly matched against another. Played every two years, first in one continent and then the other, inevitably it arouses greater fan participation as they cheer on their own teams. Generally it is an exciting and fun event, assuming one team is not losing dramatically, and it is the home team that often wins. Last week-end it was held at a course in New York State. The Europeans had won quite handsomely two years ago and most expected the US team to triumph this year. Whereas the Cup is about players and their golf, this year the headline writers had a field day about the bear pit that the huge galleries of spectators had become. For reasons totally beyond most people, the US Professional Golf Association had hired a vulgar comedian to introduce each of the matches. For the second match on Friday, she introduced the world #2 golfer, Irishman Rory McIlroy, by saying into her loudhailer "Fuck you, Rory." This was a total disgrace and the lady was rightly replaced later in the tournament. But it was an incentive to the crowds. While many were respectful of the rules of golf - rules which basically state that spectators are silent when a player is lining up a shot and then hitting it - that "Fuck you" was the start of a whole tirade of appalling behaviour of which "fuck you" was almost a pleasantry. European players, McIlroy especially - despite the fact that until recently he lived in the USA and is hugely popular on the US golf tour - were routinely targetted with horrifically disgraceful and disgusting comments about their wives, their being gay (totally untrue), their weight, with McIlroy's wife being hit with a beer can etc, and most happening just when the player was about to hit a ball. Made worse was the American PGA's agreement that one company selling alcohol could put little squawking plastic ducks in the drink. At times these could almost be heard over the abuse. All the media I have seen and read today mentions the apalling behaviour of this group of rowdies who probably had never been to a golf game in their lives before. You do not see this hideous behaviour at the Masters in Augusta or at the other two PGA major tournments. Everyone, the USPGA included, were perfectly well aware that holding the tournament at this particulr venue would lead to aggressive verbal abuse. But they did nothing to stop it apart from belatedly bringing in some state troopers to protect the European players. Hoologans being ejected was rare. Then again, as one meda source noted, this was a microcosm of what the USA has now become under Trump - who jetted in on the first day leading to many of those who had paid an unbelievable $175 for their day's ticket being late arriving. He who shouts loudest not only gets heard but gets his message across. It has been tradition since the Ryder Cup started that players do not get paid. Profits go to a variety of golfing charities. Two years ago on European soil, the American Patrick Cantlay mounted a silent campaign claiming players should get paid. The USPGA caved in. All their 12 this year were paid $500,000, of which they had to give 60% to a charity of their choice. Ironically, Cantlay with a net worth of over US$30 million won only one of his four matches. The Europeans who continued to play purely for pride surprisingly retained the Cup with a 15 - 13 lead. So the USPGA had forked out $6 million on effectively a bunch of losers, no matter that some did redeem themselves on the last day. Even in Donald Trump's America, money does not always win! When the Cup is next played for in Ireland in two years time, so will respect for the game's traditions return.

And I think with that we are both basically on the same page! By the way, I do love those shirts, even with a rainbow Mickey!

@unicorn I think you should also remember that California made same sex activity legal in 1976. As you are I believe quite a bit younger than I, I expect that covers most if not all of your active sexual llife. Before I moved to Hong Kong I lived in a country where same sex activity was still illegal. I then arrived in Hong Kong where thanks to a 19th century English law, same sex activity was also illegal. Not only that, a few homosexuals were jailed for 2 or 3 years each year as if to discourage others. On top of that, it was believed - wrongly - that the local 90% or so Chinese population was against homosexuality. That law in Hong Kong was not changed until 1991. If you think anyone could live freely and openly as a gay man as I would have been able to do in California during those 15 years, think again! Notwithstanding, provided one did not have a banner on one's back saying "I am homosexual", life was pretty easy for gay men. Remaining under the radar is not at all the same as remaning in the closet.

Where did you dig up that nonsense? I have never shielded my romantic life from anyone. Of course I bring and have brought boyfriends to parties and other social events like going to restaurants, concerts and musicals, or even just to the supermarket and other shopping trips. We have been on vacation together to various parts of the world. In that sense I am perfectly open. A man with another man. You just did not read my initial post properly. What I stated was essentially that I do not go around with a banner on my back stating "I am gay!" as it seems so many in LA do. But if anyone asks, I tell them. I do not lie. I do not make excuses. My life is far from "emotionally taxing" and I live perfectly openly without "hiding". But I live in a part of the world which is very different from LA (thankfully) and I live my life very happily my own way. Not your way. Please read before making such rather silly assumptions.

As I stated, where is the Democratic Party? Cowering out of fear! You add that it is the people who will rise up - but they too are afraid and you have little faith in them. So it seems you are ready and willing for the USA to become a virtual dictatorship. If the Democratic Party is such a bunch of wimps (and I know some certainly aren't) then the 75,017,613 million people who voted for them are now being sold down the river. Trump and his MAGA idiots are certainly a massive problem. But every political party needs strong leadership, and the Dems have abandoned its base by not providing anything like effective leadership.

Respectfully I dont agree with that in the slightest. What did you expect me to do? Go around telling everyone, "Oh by the way, I just want you to know that I am gay?" That's just nonsense. I cannot think of anyone of those many hundreds I worked with throughout my career or who I called friends and acquaintances who ever considered being gay was a subject I would not be comfortable discussing. There is a virtue and it's called being polite. Few people, certainly in Asia where I have spent most of my life, are as openly assertive and questioning as gay men in Los Angeles.

And I have to repeat what i have already written. Where on God's good earth is the Democratic Party? They are clearly a bunch of wimps. I have no doubt they may have some great leadership potential but every one of them seems terrified of being emasculated by Trump's barbs. Somene should be out front at least acting like a leader. If they wait even another few months, campaigning for 2026 and 2028 will be underway and they will be in danger of disappearing. A two-party state when one is clearly terrified is virtually a dictatorship. The USA needs a third political party - reform of the existing machinery of elections will clearly never happen without one.

That is something i should perhaps consider, but one reason I bought this apartment is because of the view and , crows notwithstanding, I will not have that view interrupted. It is the bedroom which is affected now and I have some twisted strips of coloured reflective paper being installed at the side tomorrow. Plus I will soon have my solar bird deterrent. Hopefully these will work.

I made a rule soon after I admitted to myself that there was no possibility I could be bisexual or get married. I do not tell anyone I am gay. If they guess and don't mention it to me, that's their business. If anyone outright asks if I am gay, I will not lie. I will tell them I am. But it is remarkable in my experience how few people guess you are gay - well, when you reach your 50s, 60s and even 70s and do not have a steady girlfriend - it surely has to be 99% certain you are gay, doesn't it? On the other hand, once some people realise you are gay, making both gay and straight friends becomes a good deal easier.

The above is the subtitle of a book published last week with its main title The Last American President. I guess most readers here will not feel the need to read this short new book as much has already been commented here. But it has received extremely good reviews. Not having read it, here is the opening blurb - "The Last American President rips open America's wounded democracy to expose a terrifying truth: Donald Trump isn't an anomaly—he's the inevitable product of a system engineered to fail. This searing investigation reveals how a man forged by childhood trauma, pathological narcissism, and calculated cruelty didn't hijack democracy—he was handed the keys by those who should have been its guardians. "Hartmann uncovers the unholy alliance between Trump's damaged psyche and America's rotted institutions. From Fred Trump's brutal parenting to Roy Cohn's lessons in shamelessness, from a Republican Party that traded principles for power to billionaire donors who treated democracy as a profit center, this book exposes the assembly line that manufactured an authoritarian. "But this is about more than Trump's past—it's about America's future. As climate catastrophe accelerates and fascism spreads globally, Hartmann reveals the nightmare scenario: a second Trump term that doesn't just end American democracy but also triggers irreversible planetary damage. Through meticulous research and unflinching analysis, he shows how political cowardice and corporate greed created the perfect storm that could extinguish humanity's last chance at survival." And from one of the 13 amazon reviewers all of whom have unusually given this book 5 stars - "I’ve read over a hundred books on the cultural divide in this country and the rise and rule of Trump, but never have I seen the variables that have led to our current crisis woven together with such insight and urgency."

Aniki in Taipei was allegedly as great, something I find a little hard to believe as it catered mostly to Chinese rather than expats. But I never visited and it is now closed for good. Hutong in Hong Kong also gets very good reviews. But no sauna in Asia of which I am aware has anything like the range of facilities Babylon offered.

The railing spikes work most of the time, but I still get crows occasionally banging into windows. Yesterday I discovered a solar panel outside bird deterrent on amazon which I have ordered. East to fix to the wall and the sound it emits which humans cannot hear is supposed to be very effective. We will see! Hopefully it will not affect @Olddaddy when he finally makes it to sleep on my balcony!

I only once had Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. I know it is hugely popular but I just didn't like it much. And that's the only reason I would not buy it. Nothing to do with Unilever. Not sure if there is anything against Movenpick ice cream which I love, but it is just too expensive, more so in Bangkok than Haagen Dazs!

An important point. I re-read @Ruthrieston's post several times and tried to imagine myself in his situation. Coming from a loving family with a brother and a sister, both eventually happily married with children and grandchildren, I actually cannot put myself into that situation no matter how hard I try. I think if my brother had acted that way and I had even seriously considered suicide just once, I simply could not forgive. I have in the past forgiven others for actions against me. But in a case such as that described, I could not.

And I am certain the one leader who is mildly smiling is Xi Jin-ping. Not that he would wish to see a war between China and the USA. But the weaker the USA becomes, the stronger is his country.

Very true. But then he had ruled like a tyrant for 30 years.

Once again you quote without any reference material! But I'll accept that, however unlikely, Putin may have changed his mind in the previous five years. There is an excellent book Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union. As it confirms, Putin definitely did declare in 2005 that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." That book by Prof. Vladislav Zubok was shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize awarded for the best non-fiction writing on Russia in the English language. Zubok is one of the world's leading experts on the history of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. This is a long wide-ranging work but his conclusions will come as a surprise to many. Firstly, while the west felt Gorbachev was a leader they could work with in ending the Cold War, indeed something of a hero in their eyes, Zubok exposes his faults and character flaws that ensured his instrumental role in the process of destroying the Soviet Union. In contrast to many flattering biographical accounts, Gorbachev was a man bllinded by his idealism, striving for recognition by the liberal west and yet with an inability to acknowledge his own failures. It is worth quoting a series of excerpts from the book dealing mostly with another issue - In early 1989, the Soviet rules for foreign travel were radically relaxed. It was no longer necessary to grovel and conform to Soviet authorities, including the Party and the KGB, in order to obtain permission for a private trip abroad. During the first half of 1989, the number of approved applications for exit visas reached 1.8 million, three times more than two years earlier . . . The majority applied for a foreign Soviet passport and a permit to leave the USSR and return— for the first time in their life. Bureaucrats and officials, directors of enterprises, cooperative managers, academic scholars, scientists, artists and actors rushed under the rising curtain . . . Scholars have studied this phenomenon exclusively as a factor in bringing the Cold War to an end. Yet, it also delegitimized the Soviet system . . . Most Soviet diplomats, KGB officials, and military representatives abroad had become habituated to navigation between the West and their homeland; they lived in a kind of controlled schizophrenia. Gorbachev traveled abroad several times in the late 1960s and 1970s, and began to see a humiliating gap between the abundance in Western stores and a dearth of goods in Soviet ones. Yet this was nothing compared with the shock that thousands of Soviet people experienced when they crossed Soviet borders and visited Western countries from early 1989 onwards— many of them for the first time. For first-time Soviet travelers to the West a visit to a supermarket produced the biggest effect. The contrast between half-empty, gloomy Soviet food stores and glittering Western palaces with an abundant selection of food was mind-boggling. Not a single Soviet visitor was prepared for the sight of pyramids of oranges, pineapples, tomatoes, bananas; endless varieties of fresh fish and meat, in lieu of a butcher cutting chunks from bluish hulks from a freezer; efficient cashiers with a smiling attitude, instead of rude saleswomen doling out greasy cans and jars to a long line of desperately hungry customers. And then actually to be allowed to touch, to smell, to savor! A severe aftershock awaited Soviet visitors upon their subsequent return to the Soviet Union, and to scenes of misery. This experience changed Soviet travelers forever. Western standards, unimaginable before, immediately became the new norm. Soviet realities, part of everyday habit, suddenly became “abnormal” and therefore revolting, unbearable . . . The most consequential eye-opening experience occurred to Boris Yeltsin. In June 1989, he asked the American ambassador Jack Matlock to help him visit the United States . . . The tour began in New York on 9 September 1989 and covered eleven cities in nine states. This visit was more intense than Khrushchev’s “discovery of America” in 1959. And it was to have even more impact on the fate of the Soviet Union. Available accounts of Yeltsin’s journey vary from stories of drinking bouts, scandals, and gaffes to descriptions of his eye-opening experiences. All of them were true . . . The United States was the first country that Yeltsin had ever visited outside the Soviet Union on his own rather than as part of an official Soviet delegation. He was feted and dined by wealthy Americans, flown by private jets, and stayed in the houses of American millionaires. Although he expected the lifestyle of the super-rich to be a never-ending feast, the real shock for him was his impromptu visit to Randalls discount supermarket, on the way to Houston Airport. As a regional party secretary, Yeltsin had spent years battling with lack of food supplies in his Sverdlovsk region. His greatest achievement had been to establish a system of poultry farms near Sverdlovsk that supplemented the meagre diet of workers in the industrial plants and factories. Randalls supermarket amazed him. This was an average place where the poorest American could buy what even the top Soviet nomenklatura could not back home. In the sweltering Texan desert Yeltsin and his entourage entered an air-conditioned paradise. The aides saw Yeltsin brooding, as if he was thinking: “Does this cornucopia exist every day for everyone? Incredible!” Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok is published by Yale University Press As Angela Stent, author Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest, writes - "In this provocative, deeply-researched retelling of Mikhail Gorbachev’s turbulent six years in the Kremlin, Zubok challenges the conventional wisdom that the USSR was destined to collapse. He attributes the demise to Gorbachev’s ideological messianism, his failed reforms and repeated policy zig-zags. A must-read for those seeking to understand how a nuclear superpower could have imploded peacefully—and why today’s Russian leaders are so determined to restore Russia’s great power status.”

It is a debate that appears in politics with conderable regularity, particularly if you live in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries which were at one time colonies of Britain and now members of the Commonwealth. Still King Charles is their Head of State, despite numerous attempts to replace the British monarch. By all accounts, Queen Elizabeth was popular despite anti-royal political movements. And Charles seems to be doing a decent job. His son Prince William, it would seem, will carry on that tradition as he remains a popular heir apparent, even with concerns over his wife's long cancer treatment and the public not knowing from which type of cancer she suffered. All is not well in British royal circles, though. Thought to be the late Queen's favourite son, the once dashing Prince Andrew (nicknamed Randy Andy) is now all but avoided like the plague. Although he distinguished himself during the Faklands War, virtually since then he has been a near disaster at everything he has done. And like many others, Epstein has capped the lot. He had befriended Epstein long before the Florida jail sentence. But he then kept seeing the guy and there is one now famous pic of him and Epstein walking in Central Park. He claims that he had flown to New York to do the "honorable thing" by Epstein to tell him face to face that their friendhip was over rather than sending an email. This came long after the "other" famous pic, that of him with his arm around the young Virginia Giuffrey (who committed suicide in April earlier this year) as Epstein's fixer and now jailed Ghislaine Maxwell looks on with a smile. Andrew looked as though he might weather these storms until he decided to do what became a totally disastrous one hour television interview in 2019, the intent being to show the British public how innocent he was. This full vdo is available on youtube but this shortish analysis by a body language expert illustrates where he shows that he is basically lying throughout much of it. In the last week, though, it is this foolish man's disgraceful divorced wife who has yet again shown for the umpteenth time what an idiot and conniving jet-setter she actually is. She runs through cash like water. As a reminder, in her time in a sting operation she had attempted sell access to the royal family for a stash of cash, been photographed on a beach lounger with her financial adviser licking her toes, had an obsession with Tiger Woods and chased him across America . . . and so on. As revealed a few days ago, though, her Epstein moment is now just one of the best of the bunch, it shows her as the fickle-headed, no brain, massively extravagant over-spending idiot she has usually been portrayed to be. She knew Epstein well and had borrowed considerable sums of money from him which were never paid back. Two newspapers had published a 2011 email to Epstein. A few weeks earlier she had in an interview stated unquivocally that she had broken off all contact with him. even denouncing him. She claimed their friendship had been a "gigantic error of judgement" and he had been rightly jailed. The newly released email shows that this was all a massive sham. In her email she writes basically asking his forgiveness. "I humbly apologise to you," for what I said. "I know you feel hellaciously let down by me. You have aways been a steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family." Allegedly she wrote this ridiculous email after Epstein threatened to sue her for defamation. And if you believe that . . .! That anyone in his position with Maxwell and Andrew being so close to the Queen is farcical. But then the awful Sarah Ferguson is just a one-woman farce. All of which illustrates how lucky the UK was when King George VI had to take over the throne when his stupid brother abdicated to marry the dreadful Wallace Simpson. There were clearly concerns when his daughter Elizabeth succeeded him at such an early age, but she went on to became a much-loved world figure. Had Edward VIII or Andrew got near the throne, goodness knows what might have happened to the UK. But it is not just in the UK where someone in royal circles like Prince Andrew has been able to thrive. In Norway, the son of the Crown Princess has been charged with 32 criminal offences including rape, and faces up to ten years in jail if found guilty. The former King of Spain Juan Carlos, who restored the monarchy after the Franco fascist regime, fell victim to a scandalous long-term love affair with a beautiful foreign businesswoman 25 years his junior. When finally exposed, it was discovered he had set her up in an apartment close to the Royal Palace, showered her with expensive gifts and wrote letters telling of his monotonous life with Queen Sofia. He was forced to resign. On the other hand, when we see the likes of Trump, Erdogan, Robert Mugabe or Paul Biya of Cameroon, Is there much of difference, apart from the presumed ability to kick one out at the next election? I don't see much movement to get rid of the dictators Edogan, Mugabe or Biya. In those cases they have so rigged the system they have basically become dictators. Trump seems to be doing his best to do likewise! Even so, if Heads of State were elected, I think there could have been some sort of revolution in the UK had Margaret Thatcher or Boris Johnson been elected to a Head of State position. Clearly you win some, lose some. I am more in favour of an elected Head of State, but not if they happen to be a former senior politician. They have already tasted too much power!!!

How dreadful to read your story! I was growing up ten years earlier when it was not common to see openly gay men. Even then they were usually called "poofs". A pharmacist in a shop at the end of our street was one of the few gay men we knew of. We heard tales of his attending a gay club, the only one in the city I believe, but this was always spoken of furtively. In these very changed days, I often wonder how these men managed to survive.

There are times - very few - when I wonder if what has happened in Russia following the fall of the Soviet Union is at least in part the fault of the West. It is clear from a lot of relatively recent accounts that at the start of the Cold War the West seriously overestimated the Soviet capabilities. Soviet propaganda was working overtime and many in the west actually believed it. With Gorbachev in power, this was even more well known. The Soviet Union was in dire straits, as I could see during my two visits at the end of the Cold War with so many people out on the streets desperately trying to sell their household goods - even pots and pans. The West had no desire to see the Soviet Union continue and was certainly glad when East Germany and other countries in the Soviet bloc were able to break away. But that left Gorbachev and his reforms in disaster territory. Russia was isolated and that led to Yeltsin's sudden rise to the top job. I can recall George Bush Snr. saying on television with a glint in his eye, "The Cold War is over. We won!" Sure the West won, but it left a Russia holding a large nucear arsenal and not much else at that time. Instead of gloating, could not the West have aided Russia in some way to build up a country which could become close to an ally rather than an adversary? That necessarily assumes that Russia would have wished for and accepted western assistance. But by leaving Russia to its own devices it all but ensured the rise of a man like Putin, a man who believes to this day that the end of the Soviet Union was a disaster.

Like @TMax I never felt challenged after realising I was gay during my late school years. But it was a time as @jimmie50 points out when there was a lot of homophobia about and the anti-gay legislation in England and Wales had only just changed. So I was in my own little closet for quite a few years, opening up only to less than a handful of close friends and a few sexual companions. I sometimes did go out with girls to parties at university but never in a true dating sense. I even felt bad for them because my eyes would usually only be on one or more other guys. I have never felt bisexual and even today I find it slightly strange that one person can be sexually attracted to both women and men. There are some readers on this Board who have told us they first married and have children. I often wonder if the children felt any 'different' when their parents divorced and they took up with men instead. I did meet one fascinating guy here in Bangkok. He is from Vienna, had great jobs there and then in New York, was married with two daughters, but was filled with angst knowing that he really preferred guys. At one low point in New York he stood at the apartment window and was serously considering jumping out. Thankfully he didn't. The next day he confessd all to his wife who then told him it was something she had suspected for some time. They divorced amicably, he moved to Bangkok, within a few weeks had found his gay partner and moved to a lovely house outside Chiang Mai. Once when I was having dinner with them, his two grown-up daughters were staying. All seemed perfectly happy. I hope it is true of those in a similar situation.