PeterRS

China rightly gets a bad rap on this and other forums for a number of issues - mainly poitical and human rights. But as one who has visited the country dozens of times, may I just add that it has some extraordinary sights for inbound tourists. And I don't just mean in the main cities of Beijing and Shanghai - although a visit to the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall are as memorable as any anywhere. For those who might consider China, I would definitely suggest they try to visit Harbin in the far north east during the spectacular month-long Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in January/February. I know there is one in Sapporo in Japan, but frankly it is not a patch on the one in Harbin. Here there are two parks: the ice park involving dozens of mega-ice scuptures which are lit from within at night (and so a daytime and nighttime visit are essential); the other the snow park where smaller but also some huge snow scultures can be viewed. Near the snow park is the famous Siberian Tiger Sanctuary. Harbin itself is a fascinating city. After the Russian Revolution, many white Russians fled to Harbin thanks to the trans Siberian Railway and a spur down to Harbin. For a while it was more Russian than Chinese. In its centre there is a now decommissioned Russian Cathedral and all major streets are named in Chinese, English and Russian. Russian restaurants abound - and there is also a gay bar! The one problem during the Festival is hotel accommodation. I was lucky in that even though I booked at relatively short notice I got a room at the Hoiiday Inn which was in an ideal location. The parks and the Sanctuary are on the other side of the frozen river, but there are virtually no hotels there. So you need to take a tour or one of the plentiful taxis which will wait for your return after your visit. With evening temperatures in the region of -25 celsius, the last thing you want is to be stuck with no transport! Another area hugely worth visiting is Yunnan Province in the south west not far from Tibet. Getting from Bangkok is relatively easy as there are flights from Bangkok to the capital Kunming. Keeping this travelogue simple, I will mention only two of its many towns and other attractions - the old cty of Lijiang and the amazing Ganden Sumsteling monastery which is reputed to be the finest Tibetan monastery outside Lhasa. The city close to the monastery has been renamed Shangri-La - but it is just another Chinese city and the main reason for visiting is the stunning road between Lijiang and Shangri La and various monasteries. I stayed in a lodge just behind the monastery. Watching the sun set over the golden rooftops while sipping ginger tea on my little patio was quite magnificent.

And with Thais not requiring visas for Russia, this is why Russians can enter Thailand without visas! Yet when I went to Moscow some years ago, as a UK citizen I required a visa. Since I would be travelling on to Europe after attending a Conference in Moscow and then returning via Russia for a few days sighseeing and to get my flight home, I applied in Bangkok for a double entry visa. Not possible, I was gruffly told by some Russian official days after the form had been submitted. I'd have to get a new Russia visa in London. When I replied that I would be nowhere within 400 miles of London, he just shrugged! But I absolutely had to get back to Moscow! What that incompetent did not tell me is there is a Russia visa issuing office in Edinburgh where quickie 24 hour visas can be issued - at a massve cost. So my brother-in-law drove me a considerable distance to Edinburgh one day and back the next.

China is now getting its come uppance for Xi's attempt to take pver much of the world. It's not just its opaque pricing and high interest rates for the loans it dishes out. Many countries cannot repay those loans. Sri Lanka is going through its worst financial crisis for 7 decades. There have been street demonstrations, runs on banks and rollng electrical blackouts. China lent it US$7 billion to construct a new port seen as a key to east/west trade. It has been negotiating a bailout loan from the IMF for US$2.9 billion. In the meantime it has borrowed a further US$4 billion from the Import-Export Bank of China to help repay other loans - many from China! In addition to the Columbo container port, Sir Lanka's port of Hambantota became key to China's Belt & Road initiative. Despite its necessity being questioned, China poured vast loans into the country to have it fully developed. The intention was to make a small fishing village into a major shipping hub. The debts incurred to China could not be repaid. So Sri Lanka gave China a controlling equity in the port and a 99-year lease on its operations. Infrastructure projects are a key element of the Belt & Road initiative. And the fear is that China is happy to provide mega-loans in the reasonably certain knowledge it will soon be in a position to control these projects. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Sri-Lanka-crisis/Sri-Lanka-says-deal-with-Chinese-bank-covers-4.2bn-in-debt

A great less expensive way of seeing the Norwegian coast and fjords is the daily Hurtigruten ferries. Take the amazing train ride from Oslo to Bergen and then stay on the ferry right up past the Arctic Circle to basically the top of the civilised world if you wish. The only problem is that the cabins are very small. But I thoroughly enjoyed my four days November trip some years ago.

You and I will always be on opposite sides of this discussion. With respect I have never advocated the closure of gay go-go bars. I certainly would be delighted if present and future generations could enjoy the go-go bar scene as we did decades ago. What I have done is report what I "believe" will happen and why. How many gay go-go bars existed 10 years ago? 20 years ago? 30 years ago? Many more than presently exist, for sure. I beieve that the shows in those which remain in Bangkok are often quite full. Great! But how many attend the bars to see the go-go dancers beween the times of opening and the shows? No bar can exist financially if it only makes money for drinks during the shows and some off fees. Now I read somewhere recently (perhaps in this forum) that one bar I believe in Pattaya is charging 800 Bt. as the off fee. The point is that the customer base continues to fall off and the new customers, especially those from north and south-east Asia, are either women or are generally much more interested in the sauna and disco experience. I can't see how many gay men and women around the world will be attracted to visit Thailand only because it has a "lock on" a gay go-go bar experience that is, for a multitude of reasons, slowly dying.

Correct. And I agree the "offer side" (supply) is dependent almost exclusively on demand. And if the demand reduces to the point where profits cannot be made, those go-go bars which depend on them cannot continue. Of course not all are dependent on profit. Notably the one gay world-class facility where profit was far from the motivating objective and which Bangkok enjoyed for almost 30 years was Babylon sauna. It was conceived, designed and looked after by a very wealthy Thai from a very wealthy family who wanted a place for gay men - initially gay Thai men - to congregate. It was widely reported that it did not operate to make money. It closed, as I understand, only because he moved to Chiang Mai. But I do know that that large plot of land, which included at least one other property, in one of the most expensive parts of the city has been sold. Sad!

No. What I have written about before - and regret I may have given the wrong impression in my earlier post in this thread - has always centred very specifically on gay go-go bars, and this is what is equally specifically discussed in Mr Kerr's book . These you can find in virtually no other Asian societies. Manila used to have an active gay go-go scene even before Bangkok, but that largely ended decades ago. There are still a few go-go bars, but from what I read on this forum and elsewhere (since it is more than 20 years since I last attended one in Manila), they are not similar to those in Thailand, particularly with the dancers being older and less svelte. And they are certainly not a patch on what Manila used to offer in the late 1970s and 80s. Frankly I know of no such bars in Japan, China, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Laos or Cambodia. Tokyo did 'experiment' with a few such bars years ago, but they proved not to fit with Japanese ideas of what makes a gay night out and were discontinued. As in Thailand, though, there will no doubt be some underground establishments where nudity for boys and customers may be common, but these are never brought to the notice of tourists or even most Japanese. As for other continents, i am sure you must agree that even in Europe we learn of the number of go-go bars and bars where guys would strip off completely now being far fewer that was the case 10 - 15 years ago. Are Prague and Berlin anything like what they used to be like in this respect? I know little of South America, unfortunately, but again from what I read, the 'action' is much more in the saunas than in a go-go type bar. Perhaps some guys who do visit South America regularly can correct this if that is a wrong assumption. So it is the gay go-go bar model which I believe will eventually die out, and it will be for a mix of commercial pressures (like Sunee Plaza) and pressure from the elites in 'society'. Girlie bars will probably continue but be even further restricted re where they can operate. I am certain gay bars as such will always be around in most cities around the world. Even China still has some gay bars and clubs. In Taiwan they are increasing. But this type of gay and other nightlife entertainment is certainly not always dependent on the 'elites'. Tokyo used to boast 400 bars (almost all tiny) in the Shinjuku ni-chome district alone. That number droped by 25% in the last 10 or so years as could be seen pre-covid by the open spaces where buildings have been torn down. That has not been a mandate of any elite. It has been purely commercial pressures. The one area where Tokyo in particular is clamping down on a certain type of nightlife is on the multitude of host clubs principally for young ladies. Japanese lawmakers rarely become involved in nightlife. After all it was the Americans who wrote their constitution! But almost uniquely they have recently become concerned at questionable business practices in host clubs where the object is to relieve young ladies of vast amounts of cash for super expensive drinks like Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac or vintage Cristal champagne, all with a mark-up often in the range of 10 times the actual price. Recently Japanese newpapers have been full of information about one club where a customer attacked the host by stabbing him in the shoulder with a knife, accusing him of having ruined her life. Host bars for women have been around for 60 years but recently the pressure of their pet hosts, especially in the clubs in Kabukicho near Shinjuku, to make them spend such vast amounts has led to some patrons becoming prostitutes to pay for their habit while others find themselves in a rapidly spiralling debt. Some hosts actively encourage the customers to go into sex work. Others have resorted to suicide. These clubs actually operate under a specific section of an entertainment law. Now the Liberal Democratic Party is considering changes that will increase regulation.

Obviously works for some. I was in Rio for just two days and was mugged in the middle of day. It was a Sunday with few people around!

I'd like to have a close look at your crystal ball. Probably a bit of mist in there somewhere LOL Please name a country where the elites have "succumbed". A gay scene will always be around as it is in almost every country in the world outside continental Africa and a few other countries. The question essentially is: will it remain as one with gay go-go bars? You know my response!

Let's not forget it's not only Trump. Politics in the UK has become a cess pit of lying, factions, mismanagement and backstabbing! France is fractionally less so . . . and so on. The idea of public service clearly went out of the window many decades ago. Now it's what's best for me, me, me and my family and friends. Greed has become the currency of politics in many countries. My own belief is that there are five factors which have led to this situation. One is the extremely limited and often dreadful experience of many who aspire to high office. If Boards of Directors require that the CEOs of major corporations have extensive experience in the companies they will lead, we the public, as the Board of Directors of a country, seem perfectly happy to elect parties with hugely inexperienced leaders that recently in many cases have become jokes. Due diligence in considering those wishing to become parliamentary candidates hardly exists. The electorate increasingly votes for parties and not for individuals who are supposed to represent them. Secondly, the politics of countries which have just two principal parties liable to gain power - like the USA and the UK - works to the massive advantage of the above. Our politics now is basically reduced to "I'm right" - "No, you're not, you're a lying bastard! I'm right" Thirdly, in the USA and UK millions of electors do not even bother to exercise their right to vote. When they do, they are not voting for the most popular choice. They vote for first past the post individuals and parties. Consequently, in the UK at least, the party with the most votes will not always be the party in power. In the 1951 election, the Labour partly won more votes than it had ever gained before. Yet the constituency system meant the Conservative party became the new ruling party. The same 'wrong' party won in 1974. In New Zealand, the elections of 1978 and 1981 returned the party with less total votes. The first past the post congressional and parliamentary system does not work in favour of electors. Proportional representation is the only fair way of conducting elections, even though the mechanics of organising this may be extremely difficult. But that is no reason for not implenting it. Finally, something has to be done to persuade more individuals to exercise their right to vote. After all, milions across the world died in movements to ensure all citizens in future have the right to vote. Some countries have introduced compulsory voting - Australia, Austria, Uruguay, Belgium and several others including Thailand mandate this. One argument against compulsory voting seems to be that it impacts on an individual's freedoms. What a load of nonsense! Freedom comes with responsibility, and is there anything more irresponsible than in deliberately not voting for the individuals who will run your country?

Could not agree more. I did once meet a lovely looking guy in Hong Kong who eventually came back to my apartment. But he had some form of body odour that was permanent. No idea what causes that. He had tried all manner of colognes and consulted doctors but nothing worked. Very sad for him.

Well, I suppose I could just get used to a regular diet of Beluga caviar, Hokkaido scallops, New Zealand lamb, the London Savoy Hotel chef's beef wellington, pavlova, baklava, the best chocolate mousse with a hint of the best cognac, and creme brulee! Roll on winning the lottery! LOL

Rememer the Hotel Babylon and Air Babylon books? Most just did not believe that these were books of fact, so outrageous were some of the anecdotes. I still do not believe everything in their pages, but I cannot prove it.

I think the only comment I can usefully make to further the debate is that the elites and their cronies in the army control much of what goes on in this country. Their influence vastly outweighs their numbers - as is the case in quite a number of countries. Around 2000 it was thought that Thaksin would at least reduce the influence of the elites. How successful or otherwise he was is clearly a matter of debate. He certainly opened the eyes of the majority around rhe country that they had a vote which could effect their lives. But my own view is that overall he failed to reduce the influence of the elites by much. My hope is that come the next election Pita Limjaroenrat and his party will be true to their word and that the people will finally have a much greater say in the running of the country. That assumes the elite will permit that to happen. I know what I think. Only time will tell.

Even before becoming a Ramada it was a Holiday Inn! I stayed once and discovered it permitted joiners but there was a cashier at the lifts and if you had not pre-booked a twin room, you were charged for an extra person before you could take your boy du jour up to your room. Oddly no-one seemed to mind in those days.

Nor would I, even if I had the cash to afford one of the large apartments on The World. Imagine being stuck with the same restaurants, the same basic daily life, nowhere to walk other than around the ship etc. Great for a week or two; then plain boring.

Ha! The Montien was the second hotel I stayed in on my vast number of Bangkok trips. But it was known to have a very strict policy of "no guests" which is why I never stayed there again.

I don't think it was just a case of following rules, it was more of being caught by the massive number of security cameras around the place. Also one guy told me he valued his job and would never break that particular rule. Different rules or different shopping lilnes perhaps.

Although this is going back in time, the Hyatt and what was then The Regent (later the Four Seasons and now the Anantara), both on Rajadamri, denied visitor access to rooms from evenings on and had security at the lifts to check. Getting guys up meant checking when lifts would be arriving back at ground floor level and security with his eyes elsewhere. No idea about situation now.

I wish I had been on one of your cruises! There were several cute Thai guys on my 17 day cruise, but I was told any crew member in a guest's cabin unless on the housekeeping staff or room service would be immediately fired!

I feel very much the same! I often thought in part it might be due to getting older and having more time to consider the state of the world. And then I thought about my parents and their generation. Their news was based on daily newspapers, radio news bulletins and later shortish television news bulletins. I remember them discussing a few national issues like the colossal mistake when France and Britain invaded Egypt in a vain attempt to re-take the Suez Canal afer Nasser nationalised it. It helped dethrone a UK Prime Minister and probably eventually a government, but that did not seem to matter so much to them. When relatives and their friends came round, I rarely remember national issues being discussed. I suspect there are are primarily three reasons for the changes since those days. The advance of television and the influence of television news programmes (and the political views of the owners of the stations) on everyone's thinking is onviously one. I can remember the times when the BBC was trusted as almost saintly in the way it reported actual facts. Interviews with politicians were genteel affairs. And if they ever ruffled politicians' feathers, there was hell to pay. One of the BBC's finest reporters and foreign correspondents was James Mossman. One evening he basically lost his BBC cool. There was a famous iive interview with Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He verbally attacked Wilson over his government's backing for President Johnson's stance on the Vietnam War when this appeared at odds with Wison's own philosophy. When Wilson, as was his habit waffled, Mossman would not let up. He kept on and on at Wilson in a manner we are more used to today. Wilson stormed out of the studio furious and made his anger known to the Director General the following day. Mossman was quickly relegated to hosting a new programme about the arts. Unhappy about his demotion and being away from the action of politics and foreign affairs, Mossman went into a depression. As a gay man he had fallen in love with a younger Canadian boyfriend. But he had died in his early 30s of an accidental overdose. Aged 44 Mossman then took his own life. If anyone is interested, there is a fascinating play about Mossman which was premiered at London's National Theatre 15 years ago. Titled The Reporter it was written by Nicholas Wright. The second reason surely is the freedoms that people in power now have to assert their own views however outlandish, wacky, even untrue they may be. Television has mushroomed to include channels to cater for every taste. I'm not sure to what degree they actually influence the views of most, but they certainly reinforce existing views. Thirdly social media has become an amazingly popular way to spread nonsense. Of course, much of its content is perfectly acceptable, but increasingly it seems to be what I call unsocial media. I actually fear for our futures when people like Musk, Trump and others increasingly control what they want us to believe.

You are abosolutly correct. Sorry for my error.

Apologies! I thought I had read comments on the forum some months ago about how it had closed. That's why I was a bit surprised to see it on Patpong 2. It is obviously where is always was - on the upstairs.

Is it likely that Madame Sunee who seems to own most of that area also owns Nice Boys which is slightly outside?

There was a famous case which I have written about some years before involving the head of Hong Kong's most prestigious law firm. His company was involved in defending a major corporate client in what was to become Hong Kong's longest and ultimately most farcical court case. On the day he was due to provide evidence to the police, he did not appear. Those sent to his home in Hong Kong's wealthiest district found his body at the bottom of his swimming pool. So far, suicide might seem possible. But, he was dressed in his immaculate three piece suit and tie, his black highly polished shoes placed side by side at the poolside and a metal chain was around his neck tied to the grille at the bottom of the pool. Suicide much less likely, one would think. Not so, said the coroner, who delivered a verdict of suicide! So much of this case was like a detective novel. The defendant, a small Malaysian businessman named George Tan who had been declared bankrupt in Singapore in 1972, arrived in Hong Kong where he opened a small pest control business,. Soon he opened another business which he appropriately named the Carrian Group. Soon Carrian was on the lips of all investors after it paid a monstrous amount for a smallish skyscraper in Central Hong Kong, certainly vastly more than it was worth at the time, and then sold it months later for an even larger amount. As Carrian expanded within little more than three years into property, insurance, shipping, hotels and restaurants on three continents, a major economic property bubble had started. But Carrian was built on sand, much of it illegal. A Malaysian banker from a bank which had lent Carrian US$600 million was sent to Hong Kong to find out what was happening. He was found strangled in a New Territories field with his luxury hotel bathrobe around his neck. Long before Enron and Worldcom, Carrian had perpetrated the largest financial fraud of its time - the early 1980s. Apart from massive corruption and murder, Carrian was guilty of false accounting, illusory profits from a multitude of companies, use of offshore companies which shifted money around before regulators knew what they were up against etc. Carrian was found to owe 40 banks, some of the best-known in the business, US$1.5 billion. Eventually Tan and an associate were arrested and tried. The judge, Justice Barker, was relatively new to Hong Kong and it became clear as months and months of financial evidence was being presented before him and the jury, that he was losing the plot - quite literally! Somewhat ironically I had met the Justice. He was a friend of a UK friend of mine, a fellow circuit court judge. It was suggested I meet with him. Instead, I assumed, of a plush bar in the city's Mandarin Hotel, he suggested a pub by the name of The Bull and Bear. I throroughly enjoyed Denis Barker QC's company, but was concerned that being lunchtime he was drinking a considerable amount when I assumed he'd be presiding over some case or other thereafter. The Carrian case dragged on for 18 months. By then Barker was away with the fairies. He announced to the jury that eveyrthing was far too complicated and the accused had nothing to answer for! It was a scandal of enormous proportions. A judicial review found Barker guilty and he had to retire from the bench. Barker and his wife left Hong Kong soon after that. He retired in disgrace to Cyprus. Soon after, he wrapped his car around a tree. He left so many debts that his wife, whom he had married just before settling in Cyprus, sent his robes to the Chief Justice in Hong Kong hoping they could be sold and enough money raised to provide a headstone in Cyprus. Whether that headstone exists, I have no idea!