PeterRS

So you don't think it odd that the term 9/11 has come to mean just one thong over the years since that dreadful event?

A great project! Too many of the remaining old klongs are just an eyesore. Lest anyone think the disappearance of the klongs in the 1950s and 60s was purely a Thai idea, it took as a result of reports from supposedly expert overseas consultants!

I had coffee with a former business colleague yesterday. She is on the fringe of the group @macaroni21 mentions and I'd call her medium-so rather than high-so. She is a well-travelled lady whose husband spent much of his working life in New York (her first husband died many years ago). I'd call her very open minded, but she detests the reputation Thailand has as the sex capital of Asia. She certainly does not believe for a minute that "temples and elephant parks" are what drives tourism. She does believe that Thailand competes with countries like Malaysia and the Philippines for family beach holidays. Since this is a gay chat room, I think we tend to forget that many millions of families do visit Thailand for that very reason. I remember a week I spent at a 5-star hotel in Khao Lak about 7 years ago. I only went because a travel site had a 70% discount. I had forgotten that my week was the week after Easter. All the other guests bar a few Japanese were European families. An afternoon having a look at other up-market beach hotels showed a similar clientele. Tours to Phang-na, the Andaman Islands and others were fully booked. Khao Lak had no sex scene at that time (or I believe has at any time). My Thai friend has known for years that I am gay. She fully understands that many capital cities in Asia have a thriving sex scene. What angers her is that in Thailand it is so "in your face" internationally, as it were. As a regular visitor to Tokyo she had no idea there is a thriving gay scene in Shinjuku, Ueno and elsewhere until I told her. Same with Taipei. But then few visitors to those cities know about their gay scenes because they are no understated.

Other airlines are offering what seem like good fares but then you find there are expensive add ons. I booked on Qatar to the UK in March - 4 sectors with plane change in Doha. Every other time I have booked a biz class ticket, lounge access and seat selection have been part of the advertised price. I know some other airlines make you pay for seat selection - notably the huge fees charged by British Airways - but never before on Qatar. My ticket ended up 20,000 baht more than the basic offered on the website because I do need to select seats on overnight flights and I just prefer to spend a a long stopover in Doha in the excellent lounge than sitting for hours in the noisy departure area. My choice which others might prefer to forego.

That's a huge number of slots. This must indicate a continuing long slump for the tourist industry.

I did not in any way mean to suggest that you were incorrect or that the USA does not have its own system. However, as @macaroni21 confirmed, there is a standard international certificate of vaccination accepted by virtually all countries. I just do not understand why it would not be issued within the USA. Although the international certificate is for those travelling overseas and the US document is clearly for internal USA use. I am sure you can also apply for the yellow international one.

Thailand issues the standard international vaccination document similar to what you would receive if you went to South America or parts of Africa and required proof of a Yellow Fever vaccination on your return. This small yellow paper document is issued by the Department of Disease Control and does indeed have full name, passport number, nationality and date of birth in addition to the details of the vaccination dates and doses.

I had never heard of Phú Quốc until late 2018 when I was planning a trip to Vietnam for February 2019. I wanted the trip to end somewhere on a beach. Fortunately I had loads of points in the Marriott Hotel programme and I noticed that the island has a Bili Bensley designed Marriott Resort which had opened the previous year. So I got rid of many of them for a 5-night stay. I absolutely loved the hotel and the beach. It's certainly not cheap but the facilities were wonderful and the mostly young staff fantastic. I thoroughly recommend it for anyone wishing to splurge. I would prefer to return to a good hotel on Phú Quốc before Phuket now. Bangkok Airways used to have a daily flight from BKK. Once tourism is up and running again, the authorities may also restart the hydrofoil from Ho Chi Minh. The Marriott is close to the south east end of the island. Further up the same beach are a couple of other hotels which might be worth checking. There are also loads of other hotels on other beaches.

The covidvax website estimates that Taiwan will be 70% vaccinated with 2 doses by November 29. https://covidvax.live/location/twn

With Singaore and the UK experiencing near record numbers of cases, I am surprised they are on the list. Also I heard this morning that there is now a new mutation of the Delta Variant which is accounting for 6% of new cases appearing in the UK. This is thought to be 10% - 15% more transmissible than the original Delta variant. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/21/the-delta-variant-has-a-mutation-what-we-know-so-far.html

I know - it all happened ten years ago and is probably forgotten by most. I only bring it up as last night I watched a Netflix mini-series "Room 2806: The Accusation". I am very late in watching it as it was produced in 2020. But I found it fascinating, with the memories I have of that scandal jogged by the four episodes featuring most of the people who actually participated in the events. To recap. Dominique Strauss Kahn (referred to by all as DSK) was the brilliant Chairman of the International Monetary Fund who had helped steer the world through the 2008 financial crisis. An economist turned Socialist politician, he was the leading candidate to win the 2012 French Presidential election by beating the hugely unpopular incumbent Nicholas Sarkosy who is now serving a second term in jail over financial irregularities re that 2012 campaign. It was known that Sarkosy's party was up to dirty tricks against DSK. Although based in Washington, DSK had spent a night in New York prior to having lunch with one of his daughters and then a flight to Paris. The following day he would be meeting the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In New York he stayed at the French-owned Sofitel. As a VVIP he was upgraded to the Presidential Suite on floor 28. Although the facts remain somewhat unclear and many internet sources are behind pay walls, there is enough information there to re-piece together much of the story. It is known that soon after arrival at the Sofitel he went out and spent several hours with a young lady. The following morning he made and received some calls on his 6 mobile phones. One was from a party worker in France to warn him about another dirty tricks campaign being mounted against him by Sarkosy's party. He then called his wife in Paris asking her to call for their house in the luxury Place des Voges area to be electronically surveilled for bugs the following morning. He then started to pack his small trolley bag. Before leaving his room, he took a shower, dressed and was at check out by 12:30. Floor map showing the Presidential Suite #2806 and another room #2820: from the New York Times The scandal that quickly erupted concerns a room service maid on the 28th floor that morning. The Sofitel's security logged every time a key card was used to enter, but not when a door opened without a card - e.g. on exit. The maid, Ms. Diallo claims she entered the room to clean it just after midday. She claims she saw the occupant's luggage in the hallway. But she did not leave. She continued into the large suite. Once in the bedroom she saw a naked DSK coming through the corridor from the bathroom. She then alleges that he assaulted her sexually, forcing her to the floor and then giving him oral sex. The deed done, he left the suite with his bags, checked out and had lunch with his daughter. He then took a taxi to JFK where he waited for the 4:10pm overnight flight to Paris. But he had forgotten one of his phones and assumed it was at the hotel. He called the hotel and they agreed to send it over to the Air France lounge in time for his flight. The maid took about an hour before reporting the incident. Hotel security called the police. No one had a clue where DSK might be, and had he seriously assaulted the maid, some assumed he had simply fled. As we know, he did not flee. He continued with his planned schedule and was taking the flight his assistant had booked for him some days earlier. Had he committed a crime it is surely unlikely he would have called the hotel to give it his location. The police proceeded to the airport, boarded the 747 and asked him to step off the plane. He was arrested and taken to a holding cell in Manhattan. After being held for a few days, he was remanded to the notorious Ryker's Island jail for two days before being given house arrest in a residence his rich wife had rented in Tribeca. So the man expected to be the next President of France had been utterly humiliated. But what soon became known was that DSK was not merely a brilliant economist and politician. He was a serial womaniser who would probably put Don Juan to shame. He gladly paid €1,500 a night for hookers here, there and everywhere, provided they were pretty and around their early 20s. (He was no Epstein with a thing for underage girls). He had taken part in naked sex orgies in France and the USA, and probably other countries as well. He seems to have sampled even more female flesh than Harvey Weinstein. Until then, though, he was not known for any form of violence. But no sooner had the news spread around France than two women claimed he had threatened them in their early 20s in the same manner. After a long drawn out "he did", "she said" case, it finally got to court. Remarkably the prosecution told the judge it was withdrawing its case because the evidence from the maid was not trustworthy. It turned out that some time after arrival in the USA, she had claimed she had been raped about 9 years earlier by multiple soldiers, her tears helping to convince those who heard the story. It was proved to be fake. She was found to have $60,000 in her bank account. She claimed to have a businessman boyfriend who had asked to use her account whilst he opened one in a new city in the mid-West(!!) The boyfriend turned out to be a drug pusher in jail. When being interrogated she said her English was not good enough and asked for an interpreter. Yet when the interpreter translated one sentence, the maid said in English "No, that's not what I said!" In a phone call with the man from his prison, she said words to the effect, "Don't worry. He has money. I know what I am doing." The maid claimed she entered the suite to clean in in preparation for the next guest. Yet I know of no luxury hotel where a maid is permitted to undertake a major cleaning of a Presidential suite until informed by the Head Housekeeper that the guest has checked out and the suite is free. As can be seen on the plan, this suite was very large. A guest in the bathroom would be extremely unlikely to hear a doorbell. When the maid saw DSK, why did she not rush out of the room? Almost certainly she could have done so before he reached her. Some sort of sexual encounter no doubt did take place. But was it consensual? Did money change hands? The floor plan above also highlights another strange fact (and this is not in the Netflix series). As far as I recall, Room #2820 had no guest the night before. Why therefore did the maid enter that room no less than three times between 10:30 and 11:30 am? Even more curious, why did she return to that room at 12:26 pm for less than a minute? I can fully understand that if she was indeed traumatised by what happened with DSK, she might have waited before reporting it. She was an immigrant and she had a good job that paid well. She did not want lose it. But what had she been doing in #2820? Had she left something there for later collection? We do not know and I do not believe this ever came up in the court proceedings. Whatever actually happened - a sexual assault by a known serial womaniser, an extortion attempt by a maid who knew exactly who was occupying that suite and exactly what she was doing, a combination of the two - we will now never know. Did anyone in France instigate what happened for political purposes? We do know that in a civil suit, the maid received a very generous settlement generally agreed to be $1.5 million. She now runs a restaurant. We do know that the scandal humiliated DSK, wrecked his Presidential hopes and any future political career. It also wrecked his marriage, but it was his third and he soon remarried. He has always stated he made a mistake, that the sex was consensual and he remains the aggrieved party. There were clearly faults on both sides. On the basis of everything I read 10 years ago and what I saw in the Netflix series, I do think DSK was set up in some way. Why and by whom, again I have no idea. I just do not trust the maid and I believe DSK was so arrogant he could - and still can - only believe he had been massively wronged. Sorry for the length. I am stuck at home again today and writing relieves the boredom!!

I hope another member can shed a bit more light on this. I seem to recall reading some months ago that the government was setting up another committee to look in more detail at retirement in Thailand for foreigners. The implication was that all the existing rules have been somewhat arbitrarily imposed over the years and it is time that a more up to date and stable financial system for retirement and reporting to Immigration be hammered out. If I am correct, I hope the government might invite one or two resident retirees at least to provide their views to the Committee as I am not convinced a group of Thai civil servants really has much clue about the needs of the retirement community.

“Some call it a circus, I actually call it a fiesta. It’s going to be very interesting, with lots of twists and turns.” So says Tony la Vina, Dean of the Ateneo School of Government in The Philippines. He's talking about next year's Presidential Election which so far has three front runners - the son of a dictator, a homophobic boxing legend, and a former actor who happens to be the present Mayor of Manila. Front runner is the lady who has failed to declare her candidacy, the daughter of the current President Duterte. She can still decide to become a last minute candidate, the same as her father did last time. The son of the murdering dictator Marcos is also named Ferdinand but goes by the nickname Bongbong (how many does he 'bong' I wonder??) He studied at Oxford University but failed to get a degree. With his family still immensely powerful, he has risen through the political heirarchy. He targets younger voters who have little knowledge of the crimes committed under his father's rule. He is a supporter of Duterte. This may have something to do with the fact that Duterte, as his predecessors had not, permitted his father's body to be given a hero's burial. The boxer, Manny Pacquiao, is as near an icon as you can get in the country. An evangelical Christian, he is against divorce, abortion and famously claimed that people in same sex relationships were "worse than animals". A defender of Duterte he even claimed that Duterte was anointed by God! If he is elected, I wonder what sort of civl rights monster he will turn out to be! The Mayor of Manila has a much less prominent persona. Born into a poor family, he is known for having launched a clean up Manila campaign. He is also anti-Duterte and said he is in favour of the International Criminal Court investigating his war on drugs which allegedly killed as many as 30,000. Perhaps the one serious candidate should be the present Vice President and former human rights lawyer Leni Robredo. She has also been very anti Duterte and especially of his cosying up to China. She is the daughter of a judge and an English Professor who previously worked for NGOs providing legal assistance to marginalised groups. But with the Filipino people as a whole in love with stars and personalities, the chances of her winning the election are surely small. Sadly! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/19/some-call-it-a-circus-ictators-son-boxing-icon-and-former-actor-vie-to-lead-philippines

This morning CNN posted their usual graph of pollution in cities around Asia. I don't recall seeing a number higher than 5 before but that may be because I simply was not paying attention. Today CNN gave Bangkok a 6, higher even than the 5s in the usual heavily polluted cities like Delhi and Jakarta. Just from looking out of my window I can see that the air quality is not as good as recently, but it is nowhere near as bad as the dreadful pollution over the winter of 2019/20. Indeed the Real Time AQI index for Bangkok this morning is just "moderate" at 74. Delhi is an "unhealthy" 104. So where does CNN pick up its inaccurate information? It made me think of a day some years ago when I was sitting at the desk in a hotel room in Taipei. According to the BBC weather site, at that moment Taipei was enjoying a clear, warm and sunny day. As I looked outside my window, there was howling wind, lashing rain and leaves and tree branches being blown around everywhere. The city was in the middle of a quite major typhoon! So how did the BBC come up with the total opposite for its weather forecast? Since they can not get their information right, I wonder why they bother.

With pent up travel demand, SIA is launching an A380 service on the Singapore/Kuala Lumpur route for certain flights between November 4 and December 2. With SIA and certain other carriers like British Airways and Emirates reintroducing the A380 on long haul routes, flight deck crews first need short familiarisation flights. So BA has announced A380 flights to Madrid, Frankfurt and possibly other European destinations prior to deploying four of them on Los Angeles, Miami and Dubai routes.

I certainly read your posts prior to responding to them. If your discussion had been about Bangkok then, yes, I would call you irresponsible and stupid. But you claim in your original post that most of your promiscuous activities took/take place with sex workers in the USA and that you are probably based in the USA where sex workers will be vastly more aware of the risks of unprotected sex than is the case in Thailand and neighbouring countries. That being the case, I ask you again: why post this in the Gay Thailand forum when it should have been in The Beer Bar, unless you are intent on stirring up confusion and causing trouble? Then again, since you consider most members of this Board dinosaurs, why show your age by being one yourself by contributing? Best you find another Board where your preferences are more acceptable to the membership. This Board is doing just fine without trouble makers.

No, I did not. Had you read my post you have have noted that it referred specifically to Bangkok with a lesser reference to other countries in Asia. I assumed from your post that you do not live in Bangkok. If I am wrong, then why did you post this in the Gay Thailand forum rather than a more general one? Wherever you live, you can call me what you like. You will obviously do as you wish and I doubt if anyone on this Board would or could persuade you otherwise. But for you to suggest that those who do not use PrEP are dinosaurs is both stupid and more than somewhat ridiculous.

So much has been written about Oscan Wilde that we think we know most about his life. We know he was born in Dublin and spent most of his working life in London. Less well known (if at all), he spent more of the rest of his life in the Northern Irish town of Enniskillen than anywhere else. As a boarder at Portora Royal School he lived in the city between 1864 and 1871. "The Happy Prince" is the title of a lovely short story Wilde wrote in 1888. In essence it tells the simple tale of a poor town where a swallow sits on top of a statue, having missed the annual migration south with the rest of the swallows. The statue is of a young Prince who never knew sadness in his life for sorrow was not permitted in his castle. Seeing the poverty in the town from high on his plinth, the statue asks the swallow to strip off the gold leaf covering his body and give it to the poor. Now Enniskillen is marking Wilde's years of sojourn in the town. A new literary tourism project has mounted 150 gold-leaf sculpted swallows over 86 buildings in the town, including a butcher's shop, s florist, a jeweller and an optician. They follow a trail that leads from a new mural of The Happy Prince to Portora Castle. Two are particularly associated with Wilde the man. One is over a window in the local jail in remembrance of the time he spent in Reading Jail. The other is by the Victoria Cross Memorial in tribute to Wilde's elder son who was killed in action in World War 1. Enniskillen is also marking another famous literary personality who also boarded at Portora, Samuel Beckett. Neither writer had previously been celebrated by Enniskillen. Now it is hoped this town more noted for its position as a centre of what were called "The Troubes", the nationalist and religious conflict that scarred Northern Ireland between the 1960s and 1990s, will become better known for its literary giants. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/15/enniskillen-mounts-oscar-wilde-tribute-with-flight-of-gold-leaf-swallows

Ok, call me a scared dinosaur!. But I do not live in the USA and have not had sex in the USA for several decades. But I have had a lot of sex in Thailand, even unprotected sex prior to the realisation that HIV had spread to the country around the mid 1980s. Thereafter it has been condoms. Why? Because I feel that some of those (perhaps many) who are promiscuous and believe that they are fully protected with PrEP fail to realise two facts that I outlined in the "Donations from LGBT Too Risky" thread in this part of the forum. The first is that 31% of MSM in Bangkok are HIV+. The second is - "in 2016 only 45% of youngsters in the 15-24 age grouping had "adequate knowledge" of how to prevent HIV. Almost certainly as a result new sexually transmitted infections continue to rise in this group." So anyone deciding to go bareback in Bangkok has to realise there is a very good chance the boy he is with will be infected, and that the younger the boy the more likely it is that he may still not know how HIV is spread. PrEP is very safe - but not 100% safe. Although Thais covered under the universal medical scheme can get PrEP free from the Red Cross, some boys will not be too shy to do so. Also, to be fully effective a 7-day course is recommended. A young Thai MB in desperate need of cash in these times of covid19, may assume just starting the medication on the day they have sex is sufficient. Then what if that cute boy on the app is from a neighbouring country? Will he know any more a Thai? So in my view it remains exceedingly selfish to have sex in Thailand without using condoms, given such facts. Condoms like the Sagamo 001 made in Japan are about the thinnest at 0.018 mm thick. They feel as though you are not in fact using a condom. To protect oneself with PrEP yet possibly leave the one you are with open to infection is not dinosaur thinking. It is being understanding that your partner may not have a clue what PrEP really is.

Apologies. I took your post to mean the opposite!!!

"Is being developed?" That means it may be ready by January 1st! Of which year I can not be sure!

Ah, but I did not say that. I merely wrote "There is however a decent list of a dozen wines by the glass." For their quality, those listed wines may not be overpriced. But I think they are indeed overpriced compared to wines offered by the glass in some other high end restaurants of roughly similar quality. But I suppose it's horses for courses.

Considered the Oscars of Fine Dining, the World's 50 Best Restaurant List has been announced. I know many take these lists with a large pinch of salt, but this one does seem to be especially valid. (Actually the list is not truly the best of the best since some which previously came top of the list have been withdrawn and will be included in a new Best of the Best list). The top two restaurants are both in Copenhagen. The others are spread around many countries. In Asia, the best is Singapore's Odette, one of two from the city state. Two places lower sees a Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong's Soho district, The Chairman, which is the highest climber from the last list. Tokyo has three and Shanghai one. Bangkok has one run by German twins, Suhring in Yen Akat Soi 3 (not far from Sathorn). Suhring has set menus at 3,500 baht and 5,000 baht. But then you have to add in wines, tax and service. There is a very extensive wine list consisting mostly of German wines and few bottles under 2,000 baht. There is however a decent list of a dozen wines by the glass. It's all naturally expensive. There are other considerably less expensive restaurants that i believe offer better value. But for those with cash to splash, Suhring might be worth a try. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-50-best-restaurants-2021/index.html https://restaurantsuhring.com

I suppose we tend to place most great writers, poets, composers and others who have handed down to us works of great beauty on a kind of pedestal. We think of them more for their traditional works than themselves as people and conveniently forget about any less savoury works they may have penned. Anyone who has seen the play or the movie "Amadeus" by Peter Schaffer will know that our ideal of Mozart as a precious, intelligent and delicate composer of some of the most divine and gorgeous music ever written is quite wrong. He was a man with youthful desires and frequently mixed with common folk. Amongst the works he has left for posterity is a series of six pornographic canons (a canon being a work where a short melody will eventually be repeated by a series of other voices). The best known is this one which best translates as "Lick my Ass". A similar one starts "Lick My Ass Nicely, Lick it Nice and Clean". In another, the last four lines in the expurgated edition are "Very gently, sleep resting well, Good night! Have sweet dreams, Until the morning breaks!" The text that Mozart wrote is actually "Good night, good night, Shit in your bed and make it burst; Good night, sleep tight, And stick your ass to your mouth." More scatalogical and certainly not outright pornographic as is Auden's poem, but then the times were very different. When then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher saw "Amadeus" at the National Theatre, she was not happy at its depiction of Mozart. She said to the director. Peter Hall, "In her best headmistress style, she gave me a severe wigging for putting on a play that depicted Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words. It was inconceivable, she said, that a man who wrote such exquisite and elegant music could be so foul-mouthed. I said that Mozart's letters proved he was just that: he had an extraordinarily infantile sense of humour ... "I don't think you heard what I said", replied the Prime Minister. "He couldn't have been like that". That was the end of any discussion.

I am singling out for comment these items from that article. The avert site below dated 7 August 2020 confirms that the number of new infections of HIV among the general population is indeed declining in Thailand. That figure is impressive - a fall of 59% between 2010 and 2018. This represents the steepest decline in the Asia Pacific region. Sadly, though, it reconfirms that the number of MSM already infected with HIV in Bangkok is 29% whereas it is between 12% and 15% in the country as a whole. But, and I believe this is important, those figures come from two different time periods. The country as a whole is from 2018; that for MSM in Bangkok from 2015. The Bangkok figures has constantly been repeated on all manner of sites ever since then, including this one. Has there really been no change in the number since then? As referred to below, the number seems to have increased, albeit only slightly. Some years ago, another sad statistic was the much higher increase in the rate of HIV infections among young people in the 18-21 age range. Equally, condom use in this age group is low, despite the launch in 2016 of a three year programme to increase condom awareness and to issue 40 million free condoms annually amongst this age group. Part of the reason may be that while sex eduction courses in schools are now common, 'sensitive' subjects like abortion and MSM are often omitted from that part of the curriculum. The site points out that in 2016 only 45% of youngsters in the 15-24 age grouping had "adequate knowledge" of how to prevent HIV. Almost certainly as a result new sexually transmitted infections continue to rise in this group. This seems to be borne out by comments in gay forums about the lack of condom use in the gay saunas primarily targeted at Thais on the outskirts of the Bangkok. Avert suggests that more testing and more education is vital to bring the numbers down. A more detailed site hivhub titled "Thailand Ending AIDS" is dated 2018 and covers the period 1 October 2016 to 30 September 2017. It relates to what was then the current situation and how Thailand could meet its target of ending AIDS by 2030. This states the rate of HIV amongst MSM in Bangkok as slightly higher at 30.2%. This report stresses a number of issues relating to how figures are poorly collated between several agencies, the need for a much larger outreach programme for young people, and the need for many more at risk people to be tested, especially MSM, which happens to be the lowest level for testing and finding out the result (only 54.6%). It adds that many Thais are having their first sexual experiences at an earlier age. 3% claimed to have started at age 13. Although this number is relatively small, it adds that the number of those having sex under 15 is increasing. I apologise that this post veers off the main topic about blood transfusions. In general I agree that the overall situation in Thailand, particularly as outlined in the two reports below, remains too uncertain. I don't mind not being able to donate blood. I donate to the Red Cross instead. That means I am still doing something. Others will certainly disagree with my view. https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/asia-pacific/thailand https://hivhub.ddc.moph.go.th/Download/Report/APR/2018/EN_GAM 2018.pdf