PeterRS

Firstly, I do not mean for this post to start a discussion of organised religion per se. Inevitably perhaps some will regard it as so and I can do nothing about that. Secondly I am basically not a religious person. I became very anti-organised religion when as a child I was sometimes dragged to church and for years had to play the hymns at a weekly meeting for young people called Bible Service. I do know quite a number who do believe in religion and I fully respect their views, as I trust they respect mine. It appears from the news media that the previous Pope, the former Cardinal Ratzinger, is on the point of death. His successor, Pope Benedict has asked for prayers. I happen to like Pope Benedict. As a world leader he has my respect for his humility, his dignity and his constant callng out world leaders for some of their failings. On the other hand, I never liked Ratzinger. He was a fundamentalist conservative who, in my view, only became Pope because of his influence over many years of the other cardinals. As a child he had been a member of the Hitler Youth, later in the German army and then interned in a Prisoner of War Camp. Having entered the Catholic Church, he was eventually made Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that position, he constantly reaffirmed the Church's negative views on birth control, use of condoms, homosexuality, gay marriage and dialogues with other religions. As sexual abuse of young children by priests was beginning to become known, he declared in a 2001 letter titled De delictis glavioribus that internal church investigations must remain confidential, including sexual abuse. For 20 years he had strictly enforced another Church document penned in 1962 which effectively banned discussion of sexual crimes by priests. He was the man in charge. He knew about the many tens of thousands of cases of sexual abuse that were being revealed around the world and did nothing. He even declared that as Archbishop of Munich, he knew nothing regarding abuses allegedly brought to his attention between 1977 and 1982. He later admitted his memory had been wrong but blamed the original accusation as an "editorial error". He asked for forgiveness and expressed nis "great pain." As Pope he was named in a lawsuit regarding the abuse of four boys in Texas but given diplomatic immunity. He was instrumental in not permitting senior clerics to resign. When he himself asked to leave his post aged 70, that other ultra conservative Pope John Paul II refused. On becoming Pope Ratzinger could have made substantial changes to get rid of at least some of the major corruption in the Curia. He failed to do so. A couple of years after he became Pope, Ratzinger became much more acquainted with what he called the "filth" in the Church. But he did little about it. He still refused to accept that secular law had presedence over Church law. I always thought that the Catholic Church hierarchy rather liked to have a conservative pope followed by a much more liberal one. I never knew the severe Pius XII (sometimes still called "Hitler's Pope" and the subject of an excellent book of the same name - although some of the allegations in that book are now the subject of debate) but really liked his successor, Cardinal Roncali the Archbishop of Venice, who became John XXIII. He called the Second Vatican Council with tha aim of making major changes in the Catholic Church. Almost as soon as the Council started its deliberations, John XXIII died of cancer and was succeeded by the much more strict Paul VI who is perhaps best known for his encyclical Humanae Vitae which confirmed the ban on contraception, a position exactly opposite that passed by the Seond Vatican Council. Paul VI went into a serious mental decline after his very good friend, Aldo Moro the Mayor of Rome, was capured by the Red Brigades Terrorist Group in March 1978. It so happened I was in Rome on May 9th that year and recall police sirens everywhere as Moro's body had been discovered in the trunk of a car close to the Vatican. After Paul's death later that year, the feeling of joy and light at the pastoral, beaming face of Pope John Paul I was palpable. The severity of the Church seemed to be consigned to the background for many years. It had at last a warm, gentle human face. Everyone, including the Cardinals seemed eleated. He reigned for just 33 days before being found dead in his bed. Conspiracy theorists had a field day, largely a result of discrepancies in the Vatican's various pronouncements about how he died and who found him. At least six major figures in the Church hierarchy were known to have had very good reason to fear if John Paul I remained as Pope. Another book was eventually written after the Vatican threw open its archives. "A Thief in the Night" by David Cornwell in 1989 goes into detail about the very different personalities around the Pope, the disasters and massive corruption in the Vatican Bank and the possibiilty that the Pope had been murdered. Another book written in 2017 revealed that John Paul ! had suffered from chest pains in the day prior to his death and died from a heart attack. At first John Paul II seemed almost in the mould of his predecessor. He quickly revealed he was not. The Catholic Church was back to the more severe interpretation of Catholic doctrine. Ratzinger was his ally. With Pope Benedict now also in less than the best of health, will the Cardinals revert to precedence and again return the Church away from its more pastoral ways and back to the severity of dogma? I hope not. And I will also not pray - although to whom or what I would pray is uncertain - for Ratzinger.

Why do I think it is this post that is rubbish? Throughout my career I have come across quite a few guys and gals who work in HR. The very nature of that type of job means they have to put up with considerable flak from other employees, often on minor issues. Any person allegedly "traumatised" and requiring "counselling" when reading a communication simply because it was headed "Dear Sir or Madam" would be nowhere near any HR department in any company, large or small.

You will certainly have a gourmet meal at the time you wish to eat with excellent wines compared to most other carriers. But your QSuite may not happen. I booked a return from Bangkok to the UK for March. Between the time of booking and a couple of weeks ago, the BKK/Doha sectors were in QSuites. Both have now been changed as the aircraft has been upgraded to an Airbus A380. This does not have the Q suites and, frankly, much as I like the A380, l do prefer the QSuites on the B777s and A350s. But a very minor point.

Welcome to what has been going on in many countries for some years. British Airways stopped meal service in Europe years ago. Instead they introduced a sandwich service at a fee. Problem always seemed to be that they ran out of sandwiches before even half the passengers had been approached. That and payment problems with cards which were not accepted. In Europe I just take a gourmet sandwich on board.

I suppose you realise that the taxes are for very specific listed items. They are not for general government revenue. Unless, of course, you prefer airports and runways not to be maintained and security services to be reduced.

It's well known that many of the gogo bar boys are married with kids. We might call them bisexual. The Thais generally condor themselves 'men'. I also believe it's much more difficult to get a truly straight guy to be a bottom.

I believe the mass damper system is in use in Taipei 101, the world's tallest building until not many years ago. But as with my apartments in Hong Kong, that has a large plot area and does not taper off towards the top. Mind you, it must work as Taipei is on an active earthquake zone and the city experiences several earthquakes, some major.

You are living a strange world of fantasy. A Con? How utterly ridiculous! I suppose cancer is a con, heart disease is a con, brain tumours are a con, HIV a con. How many people have died as a result of covid19? 6,687, 859 worldwide so far! That is as in DEAD - not infected. And you call this a CON? It has nothing to do with a CON. It has nothing to do with an opinion. It's a FACT! As for your comments about the CDC, I suggest you read up the facts about the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Had it not been for the CDC and its constant battles against the ultra conservative Reagan administration absolutely determined it was merely a gay plague and therefore not worth spending money on research, it is likely that the number of AIDS deaths to date worldwide would be considerably more than 40 million. And that is no CON!

That to me is a rather silly remark. Although I have had 4 vaccinations, I still use them if I am to be around young children or old people. Those sticks have not been and are also not "stupid" for many tens of millions around the world, if not hundreds of millions. You may think you are immune because you had the vaccination/s. But they are far from foolproof. As the US CDC points out on its website, no vaccine is 100% effective.

If ever there was a case for Xi Jin-ping to reverse his massively misguided covid prevention measures it is surely now. After suddenly withdrawing the lockdown restrictions without any advance warning, many news outlets are reporting Chinese officials as saying that covid cases in the country will mushroom to as many as 250 million by the end of this month. Zhejiang Province around Shanghai reported one million new cases since the new policy was adopted and expects this to double quickly. Now the government has significantly loosened restrictions for in bound tourism and is considering permitting Chinese citizens to travel out of the country again. With these levels of covid infection, would anyone really want any Chinese near Thailand in the next few months, the more so given that the Chinese vaccines are considerably less effective that those from the west?

As Steinway Tower is mentioned, I assume this is on the site of the old Steinway building just across from NY's main concert venue, Carnegie Hall. It does have a very small plot area. I wonder what effect high winds will have on those living near the top. When I lived in Hong Kong, two of my flats were on the 25th and 34th stories on far from slender towers. In fact they look far more sold. Yet during a typhoon each would sway, sometimes dramatically. It reminds me of another iconic NY building known originally as the Citicrop Center with 59 floors and its 45-degree sloping roof. Opened in 1977 it seemed a marvel of design. Then an engineering student who had studied the detailed plans for the building asked the architect at an open forum about the building's structural integrity. He suggested there were design flaws that could lead the building to collapse with wind speeds of 70 mph or greater. The structural engineer realised he had made a major error and initially considering comitting suicide. But a series of structural additions were quietly made starting in 1978. These took place overnight so that they remained confidential. It was only in 1995 that the public was made aware of the building's original structural faults. But given the fact that the original structural problem and subsequent repairs were concealed from the public, there was much criticism that other buildings made during those 20 or so years were unable to benefit from knowledge of them.

The telescope, that is. I am rarely surprised but I am staggered at seeing the images from the James Webb telescope launched a year and a day ago. It's not merely the images themselves, but the fact that they capture events taken so many light years back in time and my mind finds that almost impossible to comprehend. Images: Nasa/Esa/CSA/STScI via the BBC website

It has been said quite a few times before on this forum, if you ae chatting on an app, before you even consider meeting the guy check that the photos are real. Ask him to go on a live video feed for at least a few seconds. It's not foolproof, but it weeds out a lot of poseurs.

So to take my example, you are at Sydney airport checking in on a first class ticket approx. 90 minutes prior to departure. You are denied a boarding pass without proof of a ticket out of Thailand. Never having encountered this ruling before and having entered Thailand more than 50 times without an outward ticket, given that time frame before that flight closes, where can you obtain a ticket out of Thailand with sufficient time to do so and still return to the check-in desk and still make the flight? As you will be well aware, check-in desks are often quite far from ticket sales counters. And these may well have queues. You'd find it very difficult if not near impossible in that time frame. Fair point! BA's 747s then had only 12 or 14 first class seats. I meant merely that check-in procedures for long international fights are usually far simpler and if there is a queue it will usually be just one or two people in front of you. So you check in later and if there is a problem you have very litle time to sort it out.

Not necessary? You cannot seriously mean that you are against compulsory medical insurance simply because it's a government mandate! How crazy is that! What about those whose days will come and they are not insured? I assume you expect Thailand taxpayers just to pay their bills, whether it's for a motorbike accident or a serious brain aneurism. I have to say again that is plain crazy! Thailand has a perfect right to expect tourists and visitors to be covered by sufficient medical and Personal Accident insurance. If not, then those tourists/visitors deserve what might be coming to them. What about government mandates about taking drugs into a country? You are against these? If so, you'd better not fly at all. What about no nudity on beaches? Is that not a government mandate affecting populations? Governments mandate all sorts of things regarding tourism. Tourists have to have a valid visa or a return ticket out of Thailand. In case you did not know, that's the law. It may be rarely enforced when you arrive in Thailand but I have twice almost been denied boarding at my departure airport because I had neither a visa nor a flight out of the country - once at Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific and once 18 years ago at Sydney on British Airways. My problem was that I lived here but for several years was travelling constantly, always purchased tickets here and never needed more than the 30-day visa waiver. The denial at Sydney was even though I was on a first class mileage ticket. The only way I was allowed on the flight was to sign a guarantee that if Thailand denied entry, I would have to pay the airline's airport fine and the cost of returning me to Sydney. I also had to give and sign a blank American Express chit. On that occasion I actually did have a flight out of Thailand 3 weeks later, but did not have the ticket with me and it was not accessible on BA's computer system. What would you have done had that government mandate affected you? No other mileage tickets in any class were available for more than a month.

Sorry @vinapu but you cannot seriously consider that currency exchange is anything compared to a requirement for travel insurance? Having insurance to cover your own health is vital if you don't want to end up dying on someone's couch (as happened to one poster on this Board) or on a park bench.

With covid now rampant and totally out of control in China, Chinese tourists will not be returning in force until late 2024 at the very earliest - maybe even 2025. Still, I'm sure numbers of gay tourists from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia will soon be back to previous levels, and probably higher.

I spoke to my Taiwan friends last night. The went to the new Yunimori Spa near the W hotel, not the much okder one on Sukhumvit. They reckoned the age range of the patrons was 20 - 50. So I'll go to that one over the holidays and report back.

But having touted the efficacy of their own vaccines for years, will the Chinese now permit a flood of foreign-made vaccines for their own citizens? They will need hundreds of millions of doses.

I had several fascinating conversations with bar boys over the years. When Classic Boys had to be closed because of a fire in the premises above, most of the boys were farmed out for a few weeks to other bars. A friend and I were then quite regulars at Solid Bar near Mango Tree. On one visit we noticed a new guy who I asked over for drinks. He had a smile to die for and, surprisingly, spoke very good English. I took him off twice. On the second occasion he came back to my flat where we chatted for at least two hours before moving to the bedroom. What really surprised me was that he was 34 - and looked no more than 24, he was married with two young children, yet happilly bottomed - and sex was among the best I had experienced. Had he not been married and straight, he would certainly have been bf material.

It's a thought, but where would these bottle-buying customers come from? Up to about 10 years ago I recall occasionally seeing older Thais buying bottles and then sharing with the bar boys. Very rarely a farang would do the same. But the mamasans seemed not to like the practice because it kept half a dozen or so boys from dancing and not being avaiable for offs. Now with individual drinks up to 400 baht, I can't imagine what a bar would charge for an entire bottle! I suspect this sort of practice is never going to happen in gogo bars. It surely only happen in up-market bars in places like hotels and clubs where individuals buy by the bottle but are able to keep the bottle on the shelf for their next visits. That is certainly a change from the 'old days'. As far as I recall (and I believe my memory is good), if customers paid the off fee, boys had no choice. They had to go with them. There was rarely if ever a possibility for a boy to say 'No!'

Can I respond although I am rarely in Pattaya? I do think there are some similarities between Bangkok and Pattaya. First, for decades I used to visit the Bangkok bars very regularly - yes, i go as far back as 1979. I loved the bars in the 1980s and 1990s. I loved being a butterfly. But age and relationships caught up with me. Being in a committed partnership I have had no desire for years to go to the bars. Some others are likely to be in the same situation. Second, the increasing wealth in the countryside. There is no longer a supply of Thai boys prepared to strut their stuff in the bars. Hence the need for bar owners to find boys from neighbouring countries most of them working illegally. Third, Thaksin's Social Order Campaigns in the early 2000s. Interior Minister Purachai was determined with unusual zeal for any government minister to rein in the sex trade. A deeply religious man who lived modestly, Purachai seemed hell bent on a one-man crusade with a mission to restore Thai values. His measures were incredibly popular in the countryside and had a greater effect on the bars and bar offerings than perhaps many gay residents and visitors realise. Fourth, AIDS. It may seem odd to suggest that what is now more a chronic illness than a death sentence had an effect on the decline of the bars. Thailand was extremely effective on getting the message about HIV/AIDS out to the country in the late 1980s/1990s when the bars were still doin great business. But parents would certainly have got that message through to their sons, many of whom would be mid-late teens by the early 2010s. My view is that this created a reluctance to work in the bars which were by then attracting vastly more foreigners than Thais. Who knew if any of those foreigners harboured the HIV virus? Probably few, but I suspect enough to affect supply. Of course Thai customers were as likely to be affected as foreigners, but better the devil you know . . . Fifth. Very obviously the apps are a problem for bar owners, particularly if their primary response is to continue increasing drinks prices to ridiculous levels. Those on vacation can save well over 1,000 baht a day by not going to the bars. Sixth. Shows and noise level. I have no desire to see ladyboys miming to pop and Thai songs at noise levels which hurt my hearing. The shows of yesteryear were fun with a variety of interesting acts. Big cock shows are about the only left over. Fascinating for some. Boring for others. Seventh. With one or two exceptions, the bars have failed to accept that their market is changing. They can not exist by coninuing to try appealing to ageing farang. The new Immigration financial requirements brought in 3 years ago rule out retirement in Thailand for more than a few. Brits, for example, who used to make up quite a number of the Pattaya expat community. I have no idea of the numbers now but most older Brits can not meet a regular monthly 65,000 baht income; even less have the ability to lock up 800,000 baht for 5 months of each year and 400,000 for the rest. Lastly, the copycat mentality whereby one bar is more or less the same as the next virtually ensures a continual downhill slide. To quote the late great Ethel Merman, "you gotta have a gimmick." Bar owners need something that marks them out as different and appealing, just as Barbiery was different from Twilight in the early 1990s. It seems Nice Boys has it, although virtually all the boys seem to be straight. Winner seemed to have it with its concentration on twinks. As for others, all I know is what I read here. Over to other posters.

$18:85 is peanuts. Hong Kong squillionaires will pay vast sums for car licence plates. A Rolls Royce owner has BATMAN. 'Lucky' numbers also fetch vast sums. The record for a licence plate at auction last month was US$3.3 million!

I suspect both @reader and @Gaybutton are pretty close to the mark. As was written elsewhere very recently, 40 or so years ago, the boys who worked in the bars were all young Thais from poor upcountry families. The gay bar owners were copying the girlie bar model where nudity at some point in the evening was an important part of the job. It was very obvious that some of the boys at that time felt shy shedding their pants. A few seemed to revel in it. But like it or not, if they were not prepared to get nude, there was no job. More generally Thais have a reluctance to show all their assets. That was equally true in the early saunas. As I know from attending hot springs, Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese and occasionally some Chinese nationals are mostly perfectly happy being nude in front of others - perhaps in part a hang over from communial bathing which was historically so common in those ountries. But appearing in skimpy briefs is very different in my view. If the boys in the bars find some objection to this, then the bar owners should get rid of them. Dancers in jeans would have zero attraction for me. Only if it is a legal requirement should the bar owners tolerate it IMHO.

Re alcohol, surely one indicator has been the recent World Cup. Many English fans have over decades generally been rgarded as louts at soccer tournaments with many arrested, mostly for drunken behaviour. This year with alcohol outlets very limited, English fans have been praised as "exemplary" with not one arrest.