PeterRS

As I posted on another thread, I was at Paragon last weekend. There was no security whatever at the entrance near Siam Centre. I have also been in Silom Complex with no security at 4 entrances. None of these entrances/exits had metal detectors either. Some years ago and also during covid there was security in shopping malls. But it is certainly not common now and I do not think there is really any need for it. Paragon would require a lot of security personnel if it was to cover all the entrances. And what would they do? Search everyone? Insist on backpacks being opened if the metal detector pinged? Some time ago the MRT had guards for security checks prior to entrance to stations. But the checks on backpacks were laughable.

Years ago Manila did have two or three gay go-go bars where the boys often stripped right off. The most 'outrageous' was the huge 690 Retiro Strip with catwalks running through the large audience area and always about 100 plus good-looking guys. I have not been to Manila for nearly two decades and I expect everything has been toned down now with nudity not permitted. Just my guess, though.

And I wonder what Anutin plans to do about the 10.3 million guns which were held mostly in private hands, legally and illegally, as reported a year ago? Will there be a government buy-back programme as in Australia? Or is this just one issue which has been conveniently put on the back burner?

I've been a points and miles junkie for almost as long as the schemes have been running. And I have had lots of freebies at great places along the way - many upgrades and business class tickets, stays at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo and the wonderful Marriott on Phu Quoc etc. When covid started, Marriott Bonvoy clearly in need of cash had an offer of a 70% addition to purchased points. So I bought 100,000. As I expected, following covid the number of points required for stays at Marriott properties jumped. For the Phu Quoc property at almost exactly the same period (and keeping clear of major public holiday periods), they have jumped 60%. I will still pick up whatever points and miles are offered, but no longer save up for specific stays or flights. It just takes too long now.

Silly question. I guess you are not aware that now all actors are called actors, including those we used to call actresses.

You don't tip in Japan.

Don't forget your bikini! 🤣

Agreed. So why not start by tackling the easier part which is some form of gun control? Oh, I know the arguments! Trot out the facts about the fundamental changes in gun control laws brought in by the UK and Australia following the gun massacres in Dunblane and Port Arthur and the consequent major drop in gun deaths. The gun lobby will twist arguments to pooh pooh these! Those against gun control bring up Switzerland which has more guns in private hands that almost any other country outside the USA. What they then fail to mention is that under Switzerland's historic militia system, there is only a small standing army but a large number of conscripts. All are encouraged to keep their service weapons in their homes. In the last 50 years there have been 11 gun related incidents resulting in 2 or more killed. Another argument is that cars kill, so why not ban cars? Well, I can't see a car crashing into Paragon to kill people or one coming up to my eight floor apartment to kill the occupants.

I cannot say I have been in a similar situation, but I have found myself in one which was difficult and somewhat the same. At the age of 25 I switched jobs and moved to a different city. I loved the new job. It was very different from the one I had left and I had to learn very fast. For a month we had a visiting professional who was almost at the pinnacle of the profession. I knew he was gay and also that he had a long-time partner who was not with him on that visit. He had been accommodated in a serviced apartment rather than a hotel. One day he invited me to join him for dinner. I was gay but not 'out' at the time and so I doubt if he knew I was gay although his gaydar may have been working! He had cooked a very good dinner and we consumed a nice bottle of wine. For me, it was fascinating to learn more about the business from him. I was happy I had gone. After we had tidied the table and placed the dishes in the kitchen, I was surprised and somewhat shocked when he came up to me and put his arms around me. It was obvious what he wanted, but I had zero feelings for him and no intention of having sex with a man twice my age. Fortunately he was not the predator type and on my basically saying "please, no" and "I really have to get home", he got the message and we parted amicably. For the rest of his visit we both acted as though nothing had happened. The difference, I suppose, is that had I slept with the guy I would have gained no immediate advantage in my career. Not that that had entered my mind. I went to learn. Perhaps I was naive and on a different occasion with a more determined man I would have had difficulty getting out of the situation. But this thread has reminded me of a very short relationship I had with a 23 year old Thai around 20 years ago. He was exceedingly intelligent having degrees from 2 UK universities including Oxford. He had applied for a post with a United Nations Agency. I went with him to the interview and just waited in a nearby coffee shop . When he returned, he had a rather amused look on his face. There had been three on the interview panel chaired by a 50-ish westerner. After the interview had gone extremely well, the Chairman asked if they could have a private word outside. Bascially he told my friend that he would almost certainly be offered the job. "And by the way," he added. "I'm top! What are you?" My friend was utterly shocked that an interview Chairman would be so brazen with an interviewee. He did not take the job and instead went to Germany for a post graduate degree in European Union law!

This shooting in a public place comes almost a year to the day after a madman massacred 36 mostly children in a day care centre in Nong Bua Lamphu Province. In 2020 a former soldier went on a rampage gunning down 29 people in a spree that ended in a shopping mall in Nakhon Ratchasima. Perhaps "rare" compared to the plague in the US, but as this chart from wikipedia shows, there have been quite a few in Thailand of which most of us have not been aware - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Thailand Whenever we hear about this sort of senseless killing, lawmakers in the USA - and perhaps in Thailand, too, for all I know - target mental health and the need for much more vigilance in finding and treating those who might be in danger of using guns. Many such murderers obviously have psychiatric problems, but this to me is a huge cop out when it is the proliferation of guns that is the root cause of the problem. How does any law enforcement agency identify a young person intent on murder? How do parents monitor their teenage children's activities on the internet? How many parents are bothered even to think about doing that? Even if they were aware that their child was harbouring 'dark thoughts', would they report that child? After all, it could indicate that as parents they have not brought their child up properly? How many school children think about contemporarites who are loners or who betray anti-social traits? And so the questions go on - and the killings never stop.

Merely as an aside, it's interesting that you mention both afernoon tea and high tea - I think meaning the same afternoon snack 'meal'. In fact they are not the same, although in many parts of the world the terms have become virtually interchangeable. Afternoon tea is a quintissentialy British tradition originating in the 19th century by some duchess or countess. It was bascially a set of snacks to fill the gap between a heavy lunch and later cocktails and an equally heavy dinner. The latter would normally start to be served between 8:00 and 9:00 pm but the British aristocracy needed something to keep them going in the interim. In addition to tea, scones with clotted cream and home-made jams were essential, as were delicately cut finger sandwiches (initially with thinly sliced cucumber filling), small savouries and a selection of small individual cakes. Anyone who has seen the 1950s movie of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest cannot help but recall the wonderful actor Dame Edith Evans discussing the cucumber sandwiches which had been prepared for Lady Bracknell's visit but all eaten prior to her arrival by her nephew and host. High tea was very much a meal for the working class. When men returned from a day's work in the factories and mines, work that had probably started around 6:00 am, not surprisingly they were hungry. So "high" tea was invented, this to include tea, thick sandwiches and always one full cooked dish to be served between 5:00 and 6:00 pm. Apart from the confusion of names, chefs nowadays like to put their own imprint on afternoon tea. Some years ago I had a dreadful one at the Dusit Thani hotel that had none of the traditional ingredients. Last month I was invited to afternoon tea at Bangkok's Okura Hotel. Perhaps not surprisingly most of the snack items were Japanese. Invited to the Sukhothai last week, I could not believe that the two scones (i.e. one each) were little more than a mouthful and the accompaniments so small they could not cover even 4 half scones. Ah well! Time marches on and traditions fall by the wayside. Time to return to @CallMeLee's excellent trip report and the much more important cocks and poles. Mention of poles reminds me of the old Bangkok My Way bar where young guys did the most fabulous pole dancing. Sadly no cocks in sight, though.

I have opted out this year, so I hope you will take lots of photos and post some here.

I have a feeling this must have something to do with Immigration, Security and the exit from the new satellite. Perhaps - and it's merely a supposition - there is no way to exit from the new satellite without first going through immigration. I've never done it but this is probably somewhat similar to those who arrive at the main terminal with onward tickets to other destinations. To exit the pre-Immigration arrival area you have to show your onward ticket and go through another security check at specific exits. Another assumption would be that there is no way from there to go down again to access the tunnel to the new satellite departures.

I post this purely for information. I had never heard of the website Gayifiers until I was checking the web for some more detail about gay massage in Taipei. It's a London based site and i have no idea where it gets its information. It seems to be new given that several pages have "Coming Soon" against the content. But the information on Taipei massage was good and it includes a few reviews. Bangkok massage information has 5 listed including two I have not heard of before - Taywa Massage and Spa which seems to be staffed mostly by university students, and a second which is no doubt known to some readers, 9-Teen Massage on Silom Soi 8. The massage section also has information about Singapore, Osaka and Kaohsiung. The site also has more detailed information about Bangkok and Taipei with Hong Kong, Hanoi, Tokyo and Osaka "coming soon". It also provides more general sections on enjoying the Taipei Gay Pride Parade and Songkran. In the Songkran section the only hotels it lists are pricey, but elsewhere there is a list of four top gay budget hotels - Trinity Silom, FuramaXclusive, Siri Sathorn and the Ibis on Sukhumvit Soi 4. Interesting additional features are "12 Hottest Porn Stars in Asia" and "12 Hottest Porn Stars Around the World". https://www.gayifiers.com

This is utterly shocking. I was in Paragon on Saturday early afternoon. As usual it was packed with patrons. At one end close to Siam Centre there was a show on Level 1 with some minor Korean Pop stars. At least a hundred young Thais were either standing around or seated on the floor. Had the gunman been around at that time and opened fire on that crowd, I fear the death toll would have been many more. During covid, security at each entrance was a lot tighter. On Saturday I passed through no metal detector and there was no security personnel present. It was an open door. As @fedssocr points out, the security is now very lax. It will somehow need to be tightened. A question will also have to be asked how a teenage patient with mental issues got hold of a gun. An article in TIME suggests although that Thailand has around 10 million privately-owned guns in circulation, the regulations for obtaining one are quite strict, including the purchaser being at least 20 years of age. One problem is that only around 6 million of these guns are registered. There must therefore be a thriving second and third hand market. And as always in Thaialnd, corruption is not far from the debate. A state-run programme allows public servants to purchase guns at subsidised rates. Several people, including a government servant, were recently arrested suspected of running a gun-trafficking gang selling guns purchased through this programe. https://time.com/6220339/thailand-gun-control-mass-shooting/

I experienced the same in Hong Kong in the autumn of 1980. An ageing water infrastructure and the continuing influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from mainland China had put a strain on almost everything from housing, schools - and water supply. So we ended up with water rationing for several weeks. The situation was quite quickly resolved with agreement between Hong Kong and China for a major pipeline to feed water in from Guangdong Province. Two years later when Margaret Thatcher was in Beijing trying to bully the Chinese into letting the UK continue to run Hong Kong after 1997, her main foreign office advisor Sir Percy Craddock had a private word with her to point out that all China needed to do was turn off the water supply if she did not change her stance. "Nonsense!" it is said she replied. If the Chinese took that action, she would convert a fleet of oil tankers into water tankers and dock them in the harbour. It was an early indication that she herself had a determination about Hong Kong's future that she believed would prevail. She reckoned without wily old Deng Xiao-ping who also had a determination - and he was never going to give in. The treaty signed in 1898 between the two powers was rock solid. Hong Kong would be returned to China.

I agreee totally with @macaroni21! On my very first visit to Tokyo several decades ago, I stayed in the huge Keio Plaza Hotel in west Shinjuku. I had come from 10 days in several cities in the USA where I had found myself caught out by the level of tips expected in restaurants and even by the hotels' room maids. Being European and used to 10% service charges or tips around that level automatically added to bills, the looks I'd been getting unless I added at least another 5% were extremely offputting. In one case even aggressive. By 15 or so years ago, many waiters would not move from your table if the tip was less than 20%. I was immediately charmed by the politeness and civility of the Japanese receptionist as well as the cuteness of the bellboy who took me and my luggage up to my room. Like @macaroni21's friend, I offered a ¥100 coin as a small tip (then around 40 US cents). He drew back from me, clearly offended that I had offered him anything. It was only then I realised that tipping in Japan is a no-no. I fully understand that there is a problem in Thailand where prostitution is illegal - no matter how widespread it is. Most of us are well aware that a tip is in fact a fee, but we go along with the charade. I did find it more pleasant in the 1980s and 1990s when tips were " up to you." And I think i was a good tipper, especially when the assignation was particularly pleasureable (as almost all were)! Only once in so many dozens and dozens of offs did any boy ask for more - and he was from Screwboys about 20 years ago.

It's an onsen - not a sauna, although it does have a brightly lit sauna and a steam room. "Anything" rarely happens in genuine onsens. However, it is often the case that one can chat to others in the onsen. In Taipei I have several times swapped phone numbers and met up with guys I liked on another evening. In Yunomori in Sathorn 10 this is less easy. But it will be almost certainly up to you to start the conversation.

In Asia I have found agoda certainly has excellent prices compared to most other websites. But this is often not the case in other parts of the world. I usually compare prices offered by a hotel with those on agoda plus at least three other web-based suppliers. For my most recent trip to Taipei, the relatively new site Klook had by far the best rate in several hotels, especially a 5-star one that I had not stayed at for almost 20 years. Never having used this relatively recent Hong Kong-based start-up company, I was slightly concerned. But after checking directly with the hotel I was informed it is very reliable. Certainly it has some impressive investors. Some years ago I recomended the site hotelscombined.com in a gaythailand thread. This throws up between 6 and 12 or so comparisons. I will be in Taipei in November and the hotel was booked some weeks ago . Having just looked at hotelscombined.com to compare prices on the same 6 day trip, the very first hotel the site throws up is the very good Palais de Chine. I see the first offer is rooms without breakfast at 6,773 baht per night. This is for booking direct with the hotel. The second is booking.com which has a rate inclusive of breakfast of 9,961 baht. agoda's rate with breakfast is 9,646. agoda is actually inaccurate as on the first page it offers a considerably cheaper price in line with the hotel's own price. Click to book it, though, and you discover that there are no rooms at that price. That to me is disgraceful business practice! Only rooms available should be offered. But it explains the higher price as it's a higher value room. The six other sites have already sold their allocation of rooms. I have not gone further into the details but suggest this illustrates the value of shopping around. Klook, for example, offers the with breakfast tax inclusive rate at 9,189.50. baht. But you need to give them your email address before you can check that it is the final price which also includes service (I believe it does but have not bothered to check). Flipping through various hotels, it seems from this very quick exercise that the cheapest rates are sometimes agoda but more frequently priceline.com. Expedia and booking.com hardly ever offer the lowest rate. Again, though, this is for a specific city on specific dates. To further complicate the issue, hotelscombined operates out of Sydney. But it is one of the Booking Holdings companies which also operates booking.com! And perhaps not surprisingly, priceline.com is also owned by Booking Holdings!

According to the quote from booking.com in the OP, delayed payments to its accommodation suppliers were due "in a small number of cases" to "unforeseen technical issues that are quickly being resolved." Not quickly enough, obviously. Yesterday's Guardian has a long piece about how accomodation providers in Europe, Indonesia and Thailand have been waiting up to 6 months for their payments from the mega booking site. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/01/booking-com-hotel-fees-unpaid-millions-technical-issue This still blames "a technical issue" but it has not stopped rumours swirling about the site's practices. As suggested by posters above, if you use the site in future, make sure you choose the pay directly on arrival at the hotel option. But remember you still have to give the site your credit card details to ensure the booking. And once booking.com has those details, can you be certain it will not bill you at some point before you get to the accommodation? I for one will not use it or any of its associate sites in future.

In almost every case if involved with a Thai, I would agree. Arguing is not only self-defeating, it can end up rather ugly. But if in an official taxi from the airport I see that I am getting ripped off, I make sure the driver knows that i know and give him the chance to rectify it. If not, then out comes the taxi receipt and the phone camera. There is not much he can do on the expressway. If it is not sorted out before you get off the expresway then I guess better to give up before you get an unwanted tour around the suburbs. It has always worked for me.

I totally agree. But my experience of Singapore going back to 1980 is clearly different from yours. I have visited quite a few Singaporeans in their homes over the last 15 or so years - mostly people (basically straight) whom I have got to know well through work - and spent a good amount of time in government and other offices. Of course, some people in Singapore are perfectly happy discussing homosexuality and even having been 'out' for many years. About 5 years ago I was invited for dinner in a business calleague's apartment (a 'straight' lady). Of the 8 of us around the table, 3 were openly gay Singaporean guys. It was the same sort of company I have enjoyed at many lunches and dinners in Hong Kong, although most Hong Kong people prefer to entertain in a restaurant than at home. I suspect it all boils down to personal experience - and perhaps to the type of business we work in.

Years ago I was at one of the Korean venues, but it was definitely more like a sauna and bathhouse with upstairs sleeping on bunk-type beds on the floor. No space in between; only a slightly raised partition. Plenty of room for wandering arms and hands! I have been to all-male hot springs in Japan and Taiwan where Japanese and Taiwanese have no inhibitions about walking around totally naked. Bathhouses with total nudity have been part of their cultures for centuries. In Bangkok I have been to the very pleasant and beautifully laid out Yunomori 2 Japanese-style onsen on Sathorn Soi 10. Thais are definitely more reserved. Some wear dark shorts; others will cover themselves with their hands when walking about. But far from everyone. Personally I think any form of clothing should be banned from onsen! My friends tell me that is definitely not the case with the facility in Bangsaen. Also it's again definitely not the case when you go to bathhouses, onsen and hot springs in Japan and Taiwan. At my regular hot spring just outside Taipei, the majority of guys there are below 40 with some in their 20s who are extremely handsome and fit. The same was true at the Sathorn Yunomori onsen in Bangkok. I was by a long way the oldest. The average was probably around 30 - 35. That said, some months ago there was one post here about the original Yunomori off Sukhumvit. The poster said the average age was considerably higher. I suspect the newer Sathorn onsen attracts a much younger crowd because it is so close to so many office towers.

Probably true. But it still does not explain why after nearly three years with around 20% or thereabouts of visitors, the reservoirs are not pretty much full to the brim. Unless they are only large enough to hold supply for one high season. In which case the authorities should have got round to building more as the island was continually attracting more and more tourists and stop moaning about water shortage!

Basically I agree with you. But massage is not an illegal activity. Of course we all know that it can lead to a happy ending but essentially massage is a service common and legal in most parts of the world. So putting an expected tip on a service list is not breaking any law as I understand it. On the other hand I think it would be very difficult to argue in any court in Thailand that offing a boy or a girl from a bar is in almost all cases for any purpose other than sex. "Sorry, your honour. We were only going to discuss the changing price of rice or the latest movements on the stock markets," is hardly likely to change a judge's opinion." Therefore prostitution is the primary motive and putting expected tip amounts on a bar notice unfortunately makes that 99.99% clear.