PeterRS

Pesonally I dread the thought of having to wade through pics of western guys in order to get a few of cute Asians . Assuming photos meet the criteria, can there be two - one Asian, one western? Or even a third if there are those interested in, say, guys from the indian sub-continent? How is anyone supposed to know if photos uploaded to the internet are in copyright or not? E.g. many of the photos I have uploaded originate from a Taiwanese company with many different photo sites including BlueMen, Bliuephoto and Whosemen. It posts some of the photos on its own sites as teasers. The others have come mostly from another different site. I have seen many photo sites headed by a note that if any photographs are in copyright, the owner just needs to notify the gay website owner and the photos will be taken down. Is that not sufficient? Your comments re regulations for photos threads seems similar to this present site. But when you say that no nudity will be allowed and no "ass shots", does that mean photos of a bare ass (but not specific detail) are now out?

I agree 99% with williewillie. But it is perfectly clear the Thai government dropped the ball big time with all the foreign and illegal workers at the fish market. After the April lockdown and the gradual easing, did absolutely no one look at what happened in Singapore with migrant workers? I find this impossible to believe, given that numbers of infections are reported daily. After Singapore was thought to have effectively controlled the number of infections, in May an explosion of infections was discovered amongst migrant workers. Treated very much like fifth class citizens, these workers mostly from India and Bangladesh receive minimum wages, live in packed dormitories one on top of the other and are taken to and from work in packed buses. As the government had previously been warned, they were a huge cluster waiting to happen. Then happen it did. 157,000 testing positive out of a workforce of around 300,000. It is not as though successive governments have been ignorant about the number of migrant workers at the Samui Sakhon fish market and the fishing industry in general. For decades each government has said it would do something to stop the illegal practices and clean up all the corruption. Each government has done precisely nothing. Once again endemic corruption rules the day. By turning a blind eye to the possibility of a major cluster, the government has seen its hopes of slowly opening up the country collapse. Yes, it did an extremely good job. But how good is good if all that good work is undone because it failed to do what Taiwan has done - impose massive fines on those who break the rules? In my view the excuse that TIT is more than pathetic when it puts lives and whole industries at risk.

Talk about utter stupidity. Taiwan had gone 253 days without any local covid19 infection. That changed when a New Zealand pilot flying for EVA idiotically broke the rules by not maintaining the mandatory home quarantine for just three days after returning from a flight. After one flight he failed to quarantine and consorted with a woman and visited some shops. Probably infected earlier in the month, he was found to be coughing on a flight from the USA back to Taipei and was not wearing a mask. In Taipei he had infected at least one woman and two other pilots. 170 people who had been in contact with the woman are now in quarantine and being monitored. The two shops known to have been visited by the pilot and the woman have been disinfected and further tracing of possible customers is taking place. If Thailand had such severe penalties, would any of those employing immigrants and illegal immigrants at the fish market have dared do so?

Sorry I omitted to mention something in my report on the air con. There is a control unit on the wall which appeared to achieve little in increasing or decreasing temperature. When you leave the room, all power goes off except the air con which reverts to 25 degrees - allegedly. It was still too cold! I switched the air con off. But it automatically switched on on leaving the room. I have only stayed in one hotel with air con but no control unit. Flying to London on Finnair, my daytime flight ex BKK was seriously delayed and I missed the last flight connection. So they put me up in the nearby Holiday inn. As I was wide awake around 8pm local time, I tried to do a little work. After 20 minutes I was feeling cold but could find no air con control. Three calls went unanswered so I made the very long walk to reception. There I was told that extensive studies had been made and 21 degrees was regarded as the ideal room temperature. For Europeans, I suggested, but I had lived in the tropics for many years and I was cold. Reluctantly they eventually brought an electric heater to the room. The shower in that hotel was as bad. Located in a corner of the bathroom it had just a curtain around it. No problem, except there was no raised part to stop water spreading outside the shower area and the floor was slightly slanted. When I opened the curtain, the entire floor was covered in water. At least they had provided a mop so we could get rid of it all ourselves!

Recently booked a week stacation to get away from Bangkok and enjoy sea breezes again. Nightlife was not on our agenda, just relaxation and a bit of swimming. Just as well as much of the area around the hotel was closed. I only selected the Hilton on the basis of a friends recommendation. Unfortunately he had not stayed there for 2 years. Quite frankly it was about the worst hotel stay I have had anywhere in Thailand. We would have been happier in a one star bungalow by the beach. I had to go somewhere as i had money in agoda as a result of an overseas stay I could not take earlier in the year. Although that was non-refundable and non-endorsable, agoda agreed to refund the amount to my account for 6 months. So I used most of it for the Hilton even though I rarely stay in Hilton hotels. The problems with this one were too many to itemise here. The main one is the hotel has undergone a renovation of many floors. I thought the renovation ghastly! The lobby itself is like something out of Star Wars. Corridor floors were of hard slate and wood. So every time a room door slammed shut, we heard it. Same with people's conversations outside the room. Same when families left early in the morning and dragged wheelie bags. Inside the room is all pure white - not even a picture to break the monotony. Light switch placings are really bad. Air conditioning allegedly set at 25 degrees but the room was close to freezing. Although the website photos show a small carpet around the bed, the floor was entirely wood. I guess another problem was that the other guests were almost exclusively Thai families with young children. I guess I should have realised that before booking. The constant running around in the floor above and the screaming by the pool and beach just got too much. I do not eat much for breakfast but my partner said the buffet was good. I was happy with my croissants and coffee. But after 5 nights we just gave up and came home. The one bright spot was an Italian restaurant just across the road run by Italians and serving genuine Italian food. We ate there several evenings and loved it.

Far point. But given the fact that the government has put Thai citizens through many hardships due to the pandemic and knowing full well the danger of migration workers who do not live in the country, why was regular testing not made mandatory for the fishing industry. That would have been simple, relatively inexpensive and would have avoided such a large outbreak.

Quite a number of Vietnamese girls in the north of the country are whisked across the border to provide wives for the millions of surplus men in China. So the oversupply of males is likely to continue.

After we have spent months congratulating the government on the way it has contained covid19, its failure over the big new cluster is extreme gross negligence. The fishing industry uses a lot of non Thais offshore who are provided by agents. That one or more of these would pass the infection to Thai fishermen and from there to a fish market was something that was absolutely bound to happen. Why did Thailand not look far more closely at the fishing industry and its practices? The country just had to look what happened on a much larger scale with migrant workers in Singapore. But now we have to question - was it in fact a larger scale? Since the virus has spread again to Bangkok and other parts of the country, how many in fact are now infected? With this debacle coming just as it looked as though tourism might slowly reopen, the government has shot itself in the foot big time.

It is hard not to remember that the reason for so many countries having laws against homosexuality in one form or another is Britain. It was the British law of 1860 something which criminalised the law against "sodomy" that was almost immediately extended to all British colonial nations. In quite a few of these nations there had been no major stigma against homosexuality up to that time. It was only a few years after Britain had started divesting itself of virtually all its colonies that the British parliament repealed that law. Of more than 50 countries in what is now the British Commonwealth, most of them former colonies, 37 still have laws that criminalise homosexuality. In some of these countries, the penalty is either death or a long prison sentence. Did the British government make any attempt to get newly independent countries to overturn that Victorian era law? Nope! Britain did not care.

I have been to three restaurants on that list. Only Le Normandie lived up to expectations. But then I was not paying so it was doubly excellent LOL Went with friends to Le Du for dinner soon after it opened. Excellent cuisine and great (quite cute) service. A bit like the late lamented Table de Tee although a notch higher in quality and price. So I took a friend for lunch a few days later. Price was good. All went well until dessert. My friend ordered just a double espresso. I chose a banana cake in some kind of sauce. The espresso arrived. We then waited and waited - and waited. After 30 minutes I was on the point of just giving up. I asked the waiter (not cute) if they had forgotten my order. No, I was told. They just make each little banana cake from scratch and it takes time. When I asked why that was not printed on the menu or why he had not told me when it was ordered, I got the usual blank face and a sort of "sorry". Never been back. Soon after it opened, I had so many friends rave about Nahm we decided to try it. Four of us were seated at a table that was too high and too wide. Big mistake Almost impossible to chat unless you leant over the table. We ordered and specifically asked that the spices be medium, definitely not hot. No problem. Every dish came as though it was on fire and we could hardly eat them. Worse, from beginning to end the waiter never once smiled. Again, never been back.

I have read quite a few novels about India but strangely never 'Kim'. Now I have just started an historical book 'The Anarchy' by William Dalrymple about the relentless rise of the East india Company. Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' may have been written many decades ago but it is a stunning four book fictional account of mostly English characters who chose to live and work in India and whose lives are turned upside down by the coming of Independence. Around the 1970s it was made into a superb 8 episode tv series under the title 'The Jewel in the Crown' which is the name of the first of the novels. It featured some fine British acting talent including Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Sir Ralph Richardson, Eric Porter, Fabia Drake and Judy Parfitt. I found the DVD set in London not so long ago. The companion novel 'Staying On' centres on an elderly couple who decide to remain and not return to the UK. The more recent 'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth is a huge novel of over 1,200 pages but wonderfully written with a panoply of great characters. Set in immediate post Independence India it focuses on a mother and her search for a boy who will be a suitable marriage partner for her daughter. It has just been made either into a movie or a tv series. I fear it can never live up to the novel. In the Washington Post, Vikram Seth was compared favourably to Tolstoy. Of spy novels set in Asia, I still return to Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American' set in Vietnam around the time of Dien Bien Phu and the end of French involvement in that country. I find the quality of Greene's writing superb. And of course there is Le Carre's 'The Honororable Schoolboy' set in Hong Kong, the sixth novel featuring George Smiley.

I wholly agree about government interference. But the rice pledging scheme was a naked election gimmick to ensure the re-election of Thaksin's party,. A second gimmick also backfired in spectacular fashion - a tablet for every schoolchild,. The tablet contract was given to a Chinese company. It was unable to meet its deadlines and there was a big delay. When the first tablets eventually arrived and some actually worked, it was discovered that the kids spent all their time playing games on them. The Chinese contract was cancelled and the whole scheme bit the dust. There was a third gimmick at that election. 1.6 million new car buyers were given a special subsidy. As there was no requirement to trash older cars and no plan to build more roads, traffic gridlock naturally got a lot worse particularly in Bangkok.

I have never been to a girlie bar. I have never been attracted to go to one. I cannot see the point of a girl being naked and showing merely a crop of hair whereas a boy showing a penis and scrotum is very different and more interesting. At least there is quite a lot to see! I suppose some straight guys might equate boobs with dicks. In that case, if the girls are topless, let the boys go bottomless.

I cannot remember when i first got hooked on the writing of John Le Carre. Probably it was with his third novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Le Carre described in such extraordinary detail the real world of spies compared to that of the glamorous vodka martini swilling seducer James Bond. I think I have read all his books since then, although one of his last A legacy of Spies remains to be opened on my Kindle. Other spy and thriller writers have published occasional best sellers that have fascinated me. Le Carre was always different. His elegant prose, the way he slowly drew you into each novel with swiftly switching locations and gradually fieshed out characters made them consistently grip me in a way no other writer in that genre has. John Le Carre was the pseudonym for David Cornwell. A very private man, he refused many honours offered by the British government, including a knighthood. Le Carre has died at the age of 89.

Lest we forget, Thai rice exports suffered massively thanks to Thaksin sisters rice pledging scheme that set the price of rice bought by the government far too high. After decades, that allowed India, Vietnam and others to increase their shares of the international market and dethrone Thailand from the No. 1 spot. An official Inquiry found it also lost the Thai government billions of $$.

Thaksins Social Order Campaigns certainly started the downward trend. The zoning of entertainment districts and the earlier closing times brought criticism even from the General Manager of the famed Mandarin Oriental Hotel who tried to remind the government that tourists were not interested in visiting a city that closed soon after midnight. While this forum focuses more on gogo bars, most did survive the Campaigns, but many of the major dance clubs collapsed. The massive Ministry of Sound, Tantra, Mystique, 87 and the Bed Supper Club are just some of many that died. Investors have no interest in putting up cash for clubs that have to close early. Even in staid old Singapore, the 30 year old Zouk Bar remains one of Asia's great clubs and is open till 4:00 am at weekends. But it was not just the elites that were pleased with the Social Order Campaigns (although their children were not). Several countrywide polls showed that they were popular throughout the nation. For a time the arch religious bigot Interior Minister Purachai was even more popular than Thaksin. Given that, it is hard for expats and tourists to complain and have any effect.

I would just keep breathing. For years the Thai elite has been determined that the country get rid of its sex tourist image. Slowly but surely that has been happening and the pandemic has been the icing on their cake. I see nothing that will change it. The saunas and the massage spas will likely continue, as will the Thai only venues that are dotted around the country where farang can never enter. I cannot see the gogo bars continuing in the medium term.

Back to the main topic. I noticed two days ago that votes are still being counted in the US election. Still being counted? Yup! STILL. For an election that took place nearly 5 weeks ago, I find that absolutely unbelievable. It not only illustrates a desperately out of date electoral system, it actually aids the lying shenanigans of Trump and his miserable bunch of cohorts. Is is surprising that many in the USA don't believe that the counted votes are accurate? That Biden's lead over Trump is now more than 7 million votes is not the issue. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/biden-popular-vote-margin-7-million/index.html

Nor should you. Trump is hardly the first idiot to reach high office. The world has a great deal for which to be thankful to America. But like all countries - all - it has had its less good moments and its faults. I on the other hand will rail against Boris Johnson to any who might listen (seemingly not many!). Its hard to find words for his utter failure with the pandemic and the deaths of so many. Just saying other countries are as bad doesn't cut it with me. A dear friend of some decades died of covid 19 last week. I will never forgive Johnson for that. But in my earlier posts referring to freedoms, I was not specifically referring to politics. I know it is not readers view and I respect his. But I absolutely believe that unfettered freedom of speech is no longer an option in these days and times. I go back to my earlier point that almost the entire world now lives in groups and societies. These only work within a framework of rules. Break the rules and there are penalties. Society cannot work without that. If we are in a pub and I call someone a pathetic moron, I would expect either his drink to be thrown at me or a punch in the face. Freedoms have consequences. Yet if I do that on the internet and social media, I get away with it scot free. Those contributing to this forum are mostly from an older pre-internet age. Youngsters nowadays build their lives around social media. They can mostly say exactly what they like without consequence. If their correspondent calls them out, they can just block him. Social interaction between people has changed a great deal and there will no doubt be further changes. If anyone wants unrestricted freedoms, their only option to my mind is to isolate them in the depths of a thick forest where they are totally on their own. But I absolutely take on board that finding a workable and acceptable middle ground between near total freedom of speech and the curtailed freedoms of an increasing number of countries is close to impossible. I do think though we have to try. I could never give up my freedom to think what i wish. Even so I am happy in quite a number of cases and events to self-censor myself. But I know that there is an increasing number for which this form of self-censorship is just that - censorship and to them that is unacceptable.

Does anyone know if Vietnam has anything like a retirement visa? My partner and I visited central Vietnam early last year just before both countries closed down. We loved it. Even though settled in Bangkok we could see retirement in that part of Vietnam as desirable. We saw lots of recently built condo blocks close to those wonderful beaches and really enjoyed some of the small towns. No idea if there is any gay life but that's not what we were looking for. No doubt the apps will be active around the larger towns like Danang.

I wish I had one. I don't. But I truly believe someone has to come up with some alternative that more or less works. I always find it strange that Americans, and no doubt those in other countries as well, speak so glowingly about their Constitution and how wise the framers were. Then there was the Bill of Rights which included the first 10 amendments passed around 1791 with Madison writing the wording of the first amendment. But no one has ever persuaded me that anything other than a few very basic laws - e.g. murder - can be as true centuries after they were written. Madison had not the faintest inclination that 230 years after he penned that amendment there would be the internet and social media. Nor that these inventions would completely revolutionise our way of life. Times change. Society changes. The world changes. Yet some people hang on to beliefs that may have been appropriate centuries ago which frankly have been overtaken by progress and are no longer appropriate - in the same form.

That is precisely what I was implying. Freedom comes with responsibility and that also goes for the freedom of speech. I was not referring only to politics and politicians. I was talking of each individual. If your view is that anything goes and that censorship is a no go area, I reckon that means we face a pretty desperate future. Believing that each individual can decide everything for themselves in our crazy, excessively complicated, intertwined world no longer works, even if it ever did. Just look at the progress of the pandemic in the USA. Vast millions of individuals made decisions not to take the advice of scientists. "Im free to do as I please and I will not wear a mask" was a comment heard ad nauseam from interviewees on tv bulletins. "I have the freedom to infect you if I happen to be infected" was rarely if ever heard. Freedom in any society means there have to be rules and absolute freedoms cannot work. Self censorship of the type you suggest is now a thing of the past.

When the genie is out of the bottle and running loose, I defy anyone to chase after it, catch it and then find a way to stuff it back. We are in a new era - and not just because of covid19.

A perceptive post. At the risk of incurring the ire of other posters, I return to a topic aired before - freedom of speech. It does sometimes seem to me that far too many people assume there are only two options here. You either have freedom of speech or you have the opposite: the restricted freedoms of communist and other totalitarian regimes. I am sure there are people in China, Russia etc who are fearful of what they say in public or sometimes even in private. Equally I know people in both countries who say virtually what they want, although within obvious limits - calling Xi or Putin a total moron would be unwise to say the least! Yet these friends are constantly amazed that the President of the United States, members of Congress and other ordinary Americans routinely lie egregiously and routinely and few seem to care. They see Trump as a total liar. They see McConnell and Graham put hands on heart and swear they would never do something. Yet when RBG died, they did precisely the opposite. They outright lied. As kids most of us will have had it drummed into us that we should not lie. If we do there can be consequences. Yet elected politicians and many ordinary folk get away with outrageous lying. How is this permitted under Freedom of Speech? Where are the responsibilities that all freedoms require? Why were the liars McConnell and Graham reelected? What is the difference between not being able to shout Fire in a crowded theater and yet being able to lie, libel and slander elsewhere virtually at will? I am all for quite severe restrictions being placed on the new media. Yet the freedom of speechers instantly shout "foul". We know that leaders in other countries have latched on to Trumps playbook and are using the new media to consolidate their power and policies. I have no idea how or if it can be done. But the start of restoring faith in democracy is surely the need to increase the responsibilities that come with freedom of what people can say.

If ever there was a case for a total revamp of the US electoral system, especially post election, we are seeing it now. As in the UK, there has to be a way to count all votes far more quickly and for the loser to move out of the White House within less than 24 hours. The present desperate state of affairs in Washington is a horrendous example to the rest of the world.