PeterRS

Sadly not entirely true. Hong Kong residents have been kidnapped when en route to Taiwan and even here in Thailand. Granted, only a few, but one bookseller in 2015 was sentenced by a Chinese court to 10 years in jail.

Experts predict that the coming months will be the best for more than two decades to witness the Northern Lights. The sun is in the midst of some cycle or other which indicates that the period from January - October 2024 will be peak viewing months. I spent ten nights in Scandinavia in November 2014 including a 4-day ferry journey up the Norwegian coast from Bergen to Tromso hoping to see the Aurora. I did not bank of mostly bad weather with cloud on most days. It was only on my last night in FInaldn's Ivalo north of the Arctic Circle that the sky completely cleared and there was a spectacular light show between 11:00pm and 1:00am. This year treks to Scandinavia and the Far North will almost certainly be unnecessary. The Aurora should easily be seen in Canada, in Scotland and in some parts of the world further south. Just one word of warning. Aurora cruises in Scandinavia are being heavily promoted and look great in the brochures. But if you want even semi-decent photos, you need to use a time exposure and the motion of a ship makes that quite difficult. There are plenty of internet sites with advice on taking aurora photos. https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/northern-lights-forecast-diagram-graphic-2024-rcna99053

Sad indeed, but yet another US pastor discovered not to be leading the type of life such religious men are supposed to preach. And why make such posts on social media in such a tiny town where, as mayor, everyone knows you? Ironically, he rather forecast his own demise in comments made in March and quoted in that New York Post article - "Our community is very, very low crime, very low drug abuse. Our number one problem is suicide. It is sad. I think a lot of it has to do with the military. I think some of it has to do with social media and the reality of that. That’s the number one problem we have.”

You have definitely got me confused with another poster. Unlike some of my friends, I am not a regular club goer in Taipei and certainly would never have mentioned Candy. I don't even know what it is! I have mentioned the small Commander D which I have been to and is quite close to The Red House. G*Star is much bigger and probably the most famous. I hear that Abrazo, Bacio, Werk and Bush at B1 are among others worth considering. @hojacat wrote a post about Hunt being virtually a club but it seems to have a different dress theme each night. You can find the post earler in this forum. Best is to chat with some of the guys who go to the various Red House cafes for drinks or dinner. With the rainy season almost over, it will be packed at week-end nights and pretty busy the rest of the week. I go regularly for drinks to Sol Bar and the waiters there speak good English. They will know the latest 'in' places. Since it seems you don't like Taipei/Taiwan why bother going? Others really like it. Some love it.

Check his posts on this forum. He wrote quite a bit about The Philippines.

Here - Sorry you did not like the Boeing 747. I thought it was a fantastic aircraft and loved the hundreds of flights I made on it over a 35+ year period. Well, the Japanese and Russian sites you posted were not relevant, although you probably assumed no one would bother to try and translate them!

I'm delighted you enjoyed Taiwan. But just for the record, for those who like to drink and party, there is a lot going on.

Given that China's century of humiliation included other countries being permitted to have their own nations' cops in quite a few Chinese cities (as well as their own laws, it should be added), I'm surprised it would even consider starting along the same road. And that's before we get down to the nitty gritty of forced deportations! If cops from mainland China are on the streets of Thailand, I can see the number of tourists from Taiwan and Hong Kong dropping very considerably.

Flipping through today's on-line Guardian, I was attracted by an interview. It focuses on questions sent by a variety of readers, including Elton John and mostly movie directors, actors, musicians and writers. The subject of the interview is an actor named by The New York Times as "one of the greatest actors of the 21st century". Yet she is almost a chameleon-like character on screen and I expect few will recall many of her many movies. My two favourites are very different - as the distraught, questioning mother in We Need To Talk About Kevin and as the elderly Madame D in Wes Anderson's hilarious The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yet she also appeared along with Leonardo di Caprio in The Beach. For her role in Michael Clayton she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (before Actress was changed by the industry to Actor!). In The Deep End she plays the mother of son she believes may have killed his boyfriend. Tilda Swinton is a fascinating character. She lives with her painter partner and her children in the north of Scotland. She loathes being called British. She is Scottish, she insists. What is perhaps most interesting is the early part of her career. In her mid-20s after a degree at Cambridge and a short spell with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she met the openly gay designer, director and gay activist Derek Jarman. The mid-1980s saw the misery of AIDS spreading around the world, and Jarman was to become infected with HIV in 1986. The two became fast friends with Swinton appearing in nine of his movies including Caravaggio, War Requiem opposite Sir Laurence Olivier, and Edward II for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Fetival. After a succession of budget movies made using 8mm and Super8 film - the first of which was Sebastiane based on the story of the martyrdom of the beautiful Christian St. Sebastian and deliberately aimed at gay audience, Caravaggio became and remains one of his best-known films. Since then Swinto has worked with some of the most acclaimed directors of our day including Pedro Almodovar, Luca Guadagnino and Boon Joon-ho. She even made a video in which she and David Bowie changed clothes. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/12/tilda-swinton-you-ask-the-questions-pedro-almodovar-wes-anderson-elton-john

You asked more or less the same question in another thread a few months ago and there were no replies. Send a pm to @Olddaddy. He is an expert on the country.

The more I read about gay life and gay tourism in some parts of South America (and I have become enamoured with some like Colombia), the more I wish I had visited more often. Being based in Asia, it always seemed too far away. It would not have been expensive, though, with the amount of air miles I always had.

Thailand is no different from other countries - apart from a handful like Bhutan and Japan where general violence appears to be much less than the average. What I find different here, and what @Keithambrose mentions in his earlier post, is the extreme violence that seems baked into attendance at two particular vocational colleges in Bangkok. I don't believe this can be put down simply to "some violence problems." When attendance at one college invites a large group of students to murder and knifings in the streets just on the basis of tit-for-tat, something is seriously wrong. Indeed, despite atempts to curb extreme violence, the police seem to have run out of ideas how to stop it. What I find particularly firghtening in the vdo is the open access to their former colleges by alumni - even those now in their 70s. The one interviewed indicated that he was there to give "advice" and "take care" of the younger students, not to cause trouble. Given that he himself had gladly participated in violence during his years in college, I seriously wonder what that "advice" might be. Although barred, he openly pays no attention to it. "Nobody can stop me. This is my house," clearly has sinister overtones. Although this may appear flippant, with most of the students coming from up-country and living on their own in a huge new city, I wonder how many of those young men might 30 years ago have ended up as go-go boys. At the least, for some it might have been a safer option!

This long article may help to explain part of the reason. I'm sorry I do not have time this evening to choose sections of it. Besides, i think the matter is too complicated to parse into a few sentences. For those interested, please read the article. thanks. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cnainsider/shopping-haven-mbk-bangkok-thailand-deadliest-school-rivalries-879811

If someone posts a link and dos not take the trouble to help readers by translating it, I will not read it. I read the English language flight magazines and they are perfectly clear. Sorry but your posts are not. PS: SInce posting I did check your Japanese site with google translate. On page 1 there is absolutey nothing - nothing at all - about any Ilyushin aircraft, only American-made aircraft! If you want people to read more than page 1, they are protected and so you will have to do it and translate so we can read it! PPS: SInce posting the commentbabout the Japanese site, I did look at your Russian site. And i am not in the slightest bit surprised at what it says, even though you seem to be. It states - Il-496 (working name Il-96-400M) is a promising Russian wide-body passenger aircraft for medium and long-haul airlines. Designed by the Design Bureau named after Ilyushin. As of November 2023, one test flight has been completed So despite your inaccurate comments, absolutely everything I have written and quoted in my posts has been 100% true. But I am curious. How do you hate flying on it? It will be years before the Il-96-400M is in passenger service! 🤣🤣 And please do not post non-English links in future unless you translate them first! Thank you.

I'm sure there are sites in most countries. I know of ones in Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore. The difference seems to be that the average ages of correspondents seems to be much younger than those in Thailand. No doubt a result of there being more retirees and expats here.

Was it 10 years ago? Longer? There was certainly a time when the internet had a considerable number of gay websites focusing primarily on Thailand. Many were informative, some more political in content, some just bitch boards - some providing both interest and amusement. This Board now has a much wider geographical range, but still with quite a number of separate threads on Thailand and others on Asia. To my knowledge there are only two left concentrating on Thailand - sawatdee network and gaybuttonthai. Sawatdee has gone through several incarnations over the years but now seems also to be slipping out of most readers' daily posting. In the last 14 days, it has had no posts for 8 of them. During October there were 16 days with no posts. Yet it is certainly read for, as I write at 11:00 am on Sunday, there are 35 members online and 218 guests. That's considerably more than this site which has 8 members and 200 guests at the same time! Gaybuttonthai is much more concentrated on Pattaya and has far fewer registered members. Now there are 2 online, yet still 121 guests. 11:00 am on a Sunday morning may not be the idea time for checking websites, but there is clearly a readership for all three sites. The key question, I guess, is how likely is it they will all last? Some years ago on his own website, the poster @ChristianPFC compiled a list of 'dead' sites. Among these were gaylilfeinthailand, gaytingtong, gaysexthailand, cruisinggaythailand, gaytouri, baht-stop and bahtstop. Many were very short-lived. Others did not last after their owners died. Since then, yet others seem to continue as websites but often with very little new content. cruisingforsex-asia has been around for many years but its last post was made in May this year. That was a response to a question about Nature Boys raised on 6 November 2009! After 3 years with no activity during covid, activity has slowly picked up - but slow is the operative word! Only a handful of posts in 2023. I raise this merely to ask for how long this and the other two sites can keep operating, the more so with advertising revenues minimal or even non-existent? I wonder if the same is true to a certain extent of gay internet sites, especially those related to gay travel. In theory they should be mushrooming. Are they? Rather like the maps on the free gay magazines that were common in most gay venues in Thailand 10-20 years ago, I guess the problem is how you keep information up to date. Quite a few years ago I remember virtually trashing one such site which clearly had just made-up its supposed travel information about Thailand. The site died soon after. A couple of years or so ago I wrote to the owner of utopia-asia to ask why he did not include arguably the two most popular saunas in Asia in his listings - Hutong in Hong Kong and Soi13in in Taipei. He wrote back that neither had replied to questions he had sent! They are still excluded! Frankly, that is ridiculous! Every other website lists these saunas. It really makes me question what other gay venues utopia-asia deliberately omits because they pissed off the owner. gaytravel.com has been running for more than 20 years. Yet of its travel destinations, the only one in Asia is Phuket! Click on Phuket and it's just one long advertisement for the Sri Panwa luxury hotel! Total waste of time! At least nomadicboys.com has both Thailand and Taiwan as its Asian destinations. The suggestions for both cities are pretty much up to date with a few notable omissions. Worst in both are its hotel recomendations. The top two in Bangkok are the W Hotel and the Mandarin-Oriental! Soon after come the So-Sofitel, the Banyan Tree, Le Meridien, the Peninsula and the St. Regis. To be fair, it also lists the Tarntawan. But why such a cluster of just expensive hotels? I In Taipei it places the Chinese-styled Grand Hotel at the top of its list. Why, considering it is so far from the gay areas and not close to public transport? Beats me. Advertising cash, I expect! thegaypassport.com seems to have upped its game since I last looked 2 or 3 years ago. It at least has better information on a few saunas, but yet again its hotels are almost all top of the range. Since it offers diferent prices from agoda, expedia and hotels.com, I doubt if they get a commission, but could be wrong. Why such expensive hotels are listed when there are plenty of middle and lower priced hotels as members here have noted, again beats me! I expect servers here in Thailand only get a few of the total number of travel sites. Does anyone actually use them, I sometimes wonder? Are there better ones?

Rivalries between certain Bangkok vocational schools has turned deadly over many years. This site has a 45-minute video that analyses the killing of one near graduate shot four times in the heart in front of his mother. Worse is that this rivalry seems to continue for decades after graduations. Please look at it. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/watch/dying-graduate-1511241?cid=fbins

Many years ago when I worked in Tokyo, my company was one of the few which paid salaries directly into bank accounts. But then this was the branch of an American company. I knew from Japanese friends working for Japanese companies that all were paid in cash.

Fascinating article on a subject that has largely disappeared from the international media and which is far more complex than merely a national junta taking and seeking to keep power. I just wonder about Barry Kenyon's remarks on China. We know that the last thing China wants, barring internal revolution, is trouble on its borders. It needs a degree of stability in Myanmar and that was the reason for its initial considerable support to the army. This is more true because China already had a great deal of activity going on in Myanmar prior to the start of the coup, much of it illegal. A number of US-based websites have suggested that, as Kenyon remarks, support for the military is now waning in favour of supporting both sides in the conflict. One of China's major concerns is the junta's continuing support - deliberately against China's expressed desire - of forced-labour camps near the border, many with Chinese and Chinese-backed so-called rebels. Over the summer, China raised the stakes by giving the Chinese media and film industry a green light to dramatize the chaos in Myanmar with popular films illuminating the fate of Chinese nationals who ended up in one of the thousands of forced-labor scam compounds now lining Myanmar’s borders. The films — “No More Bets,” “Tainted Love” and “Lost in the Stars” — have netted more than $1 billion at the box office, sending the message that Chinese nationals can only be safe in Southeast Asia with China’s help. The reality, of course, is that China deliberately looked the other way while this problem incubated. For over a decade, billions of dollars in illicit Chinese capital fueled the development of gambling enclaves under the pretense of supporting Chinese political and economic aims, while also winning the useful backing of corrupt local elites throughout the region . . . Beijing began acting unilaterally in September, focusing on two border enclaves that enjoy the highest levels of autonomy from central control, the Wa and Mong La areas in Northern Shan State. Both are controlled by powerful local armies and fall well within China’s sphere of influence. They use Chinese currency, electricity, internet and telecommunications, and in the case of the Wa, Chinese-created banking system. The elites of both areas have been trained largely in China, and many have Chinese national ID cards. China acted against the Wa and the Mong in an attempt to crack down on the forced labout camps. Both fell into line. But not the national military government. It still holds between 20,000 and 30,000 Chinese in over 100 forced-labour camps in an area the size of Rhode Island. But as often happens, China's influence can be seen as a two-edged sword. . . . signs of increased Chinese security influence should concern all groups in Myanmar. While the anti-coup movement is united for now in its central aim to remove the military from government, should unity and coordination among the disparate resistance groups break down in the future, it could risk Chinese manipulation, playing one party against another, to assert Chinese national interest over that of Myanmar. This is perhaps one of the strongest incentives for resistance actors to consolidate and expand alliances rapidly, formally adopting agreed political visions. https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/11/myanmars-junta-losing-control-its-border-china

They have to a large extent operated under the gaydar. Yet Asia's first-ever Gay Games - known as the Gay Olympics, the week-long annual event marking inclusion and diversity - will end today with a large closing ceremony. 2,400 athletes along with their friends, families and members of Hong Kong's own LGBTQ community will join hands in celebration of a highly successful week to dance to disco music with 'gay' abandon. It was all very different in 2017 when Hong Kong was awarded the Games to join the hosts of previous Games like Paris, Amsterdam and Sydney. There was joy among the gay communities throughout Asia, a joy that in part celebrated Hong Kong's continuing freedoms after its return to mainland China. Then came the massive 2019 protests, the all-encompassing new National Security Law imposed by China making "love China" the flavour not only of the month but all future months and, perhaps even worse for the Gay Games, the closure of Hong Kong with eventually the world's most draconian quarantine regulations as Covid took its toll. As this was going on, a crackdown on LGBTQ activities was underway in China itself. Many felt Hong Kong could never host the Games. Originally planned for 2022, the Games were pushed back a year. But the worry over China's contol of Hong Kong continued. As a contingency, the Games organisers appointed Guadalajara as a co-host. This inevitably resulted in many participants going to Mexico rather than risk going to Kong Kong. Consequently, the numbers taking part in Hong Kong were diminished. But according to reports, all who went had a ball. Few lawmakers in Hong Kong seemed to have a ball, though! Speaking at the opening ceremony last Saturday, just one lawmaker Regina Ip priased the event she claimed "overflowed with passion and a great sense of unity and community." Odd, though, that even though this event brought thousands of participants, the Games were totlly absent from the city's Tourism body's website. Not even one sentence! Even Ms. Ip was called a hypocrite. One of her remarks praised the Hong Kong courts for "numerous judgements" handed down in favour of the LGBTQ community. Activists and lawyers quickly pointed out that Ip's government had opposed each of those judgements, losing in almost every single case. “Why are they still wasting taxpayers’ money fighting these tooth-and-nail litigations when they’re recycling the same arguments and losing?” said Mark Daly, a human rights lawyer who has worked on a number of the cases. But the week of the Games was a joyous occasion for many and proof that not everything in Hong Kong is yet joined at the hip to the mainland. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67366059 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/11/gay-games-hong-kong-china-hostility-gay-transgender

In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is rarely referred to by name. He is simply "the Jew", "dog Jew", "a kind of devil", "the very devil incarnate" and other epithets. The play is unquestionably a major work of dramatic art and rightly remains so after over 400 years, yet it contains vile anti-Semitic references. Shakespeare was merely reflecting the prefudices of his times. But these did not cease any time after his death. They continued and grew worse in centuries to come leading to one of the worst crimes in history, the Holocaust. In my view it is one thing to say "a man who I believe was of the Jewish faith"; it is quite another to say "The Jew". The former is acceptable in modern day society. The latter is a reflection of darker times.

My guess is that when you are used to carrying around what for the rest of us would be far too much money, if you are Japanese and used to carrying around wads of cash very safely, you just do not differentiate between times of day.

The fulll article from https://www.flightglobal.com/air-transport/stretched-ilyushin-il-96-400m-carries-out-maiden-flight/155638.article dated 2 November 2023 Stretched Ilyushin Il-96-400M carries out maiden flight Russia’s United Aircraft [the Russian state-owned aircraft company] has carried out the maiden flight of its Ilyushin Il-96-400M, a stretched and modernised version of the four-engined airliner. The Il-96-400M – rolled out in the aerospace firm’s corporate livery earlier this year – took off from Voronezh on 1 November for a 26min sortie. United Aircraft says the flight was conducted to test stability and control of the jet, and the operability of powerplants and landing systems. “The test programme was successful,” says the company, pointing out that much of the equipment for the aircraft has been supplied by domestic firms. Five crew members were on board the -400M including two pilots, a navigator, engineer and test specialist. United Aircraft says the jet, fitted with Aviadvigatel PS-90A1 engines, reached altitudes of 2,000m (6,600ft) and speeds of 210kt. Russian trade and industry minister Denis Manturov says the aircraft retains the “high performance” of its Il-96-300 predecessor but features additional capabilities. “In the future, the new [Il-96-400M] will allow us to develop and improve our competencies in creating widebody long-haul aircraft,” he adds. The modernised jet has a fuselage stretched by 9.35m over the -300 and is able to accommodate up to 370 passengers, according to United Aircraft, although the company’s specifications list the -400M’s length as 63.9m, around 8.6m longer than the -300. New equipment fitted includes updated navigation and radio communications systems. “An improved navigation system will increase flight safety and simplify the landing approach process for crews,” says the manufacturer. It says the development will comply with the latest European requirements for navigation capability, particularly for operation over remote areas. United Aircraft general director Yuri Slyusar says the -400M will give the company a long-haul widebody product to complement its current aircraft line-up, including the Yakovlev SJ-100 and MC-21-310, as well as the revived Tupolev Tu-214. Slyusar says the aircraft types are capable of replacing foreign-built models on networks throughout Russia. The Russian government has adopted a strategic programme of import-substitution, to enhance domestic aerospace production and rely less on foreign suppliers – a particularly key issue following the imposition of international sanctions over the Ukrainian conflict. United Aircraft says the passenger cabin can be configured in various classes and includes a modern galleys and an in-flight entertainment system able to provide access to Internet and satellite communications. Aviation Week has the same story but most is under a firewall - https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/aircraft-propulsion/russias-uac-rolls-out-stretched-il-96-passenger-airliner

@Moses - you have quoted two sources: one is in Japanese and the other is in Russian. When you post sources backing up your claim in English, then I might just believe your comments on this airliner. I have seen far too many in English not to believe these English sources.

Wrong! Seems some canot read. This is what Flight Global says - Russia’s United Aircraft has carried out the maiden flight of its Ilyushin Il-96-400M, a stretched and modernised version of the four-engined airliner . . . The modernised jet has a fuselage stretched by 9.35m over the -300 and is able to accommodate up to 370 passengers, according to United Aircraft, although the company’s specifications list the -400M’s length as 63.9m, around 8.6m longer than the -300. United Aircraft says the passenger cabin can be configured in various classes and includes a modern galleys and an in-flight entertainment system able to provide access to Internet and satellite communications. New equipment fitted includes updated navigation and radio communications systems. “An improved navigation system will increase flight safety and simplify the landing approach process for crews,” says the manufacturer. So the -400M is a considerably improved model of the older -300 model. It is also a new passenger version of the -400T cargo aricraft. Since United Aircraft is the state aerospace and defence corporation, I take their word over naysayers on this Board! https://www.flightglobal.com/air-transport/stretched-ilyushin-il-96-400m-carries-out-maiden-flight/155638.article