Vessey

Sadly it wouldn't be the first time that he has been over-ruled, but you never know?

Good news about the quarantine (and presumably the Sandboxes), But entry requirements, curfew, etc etc. ? I didn't read any definite pledge to resume alcohol sales in December, just an ambition, Maybe there we be more detail to follow?

Well contrary to some of you I have found most of my Thai friends still heavily use FaceBook, and I also find their FaceBook Messenger good for 1:1 chats, either just talking or, if we are both feeling horny then ...... TikTok is harmless fun, although some of those guys have accumulated many millions of 'likes'. And I do find Twitter great for porn, and even though there is 2.20min max on clips, their 'benefits' accrue haha. But I also find their porn more spontaneous and 'real' than those of the established porn sites, especially if it is a boy I have already met, or a Pattaya boy that I want to meet! 😂 They also use Line and Instagram a lot, although those are lost on me.

Sadly closed now, but for many years I had used a little mother and daughter laundry on Soi 6, always reliable, and also able to undertake basic repairs and alterations to my clothes as required for very small sums. I would suspect there are on many others similarly capable and willing to do the same?

Haha, yes, knowing (and loving) Yorkshire folk as I do, they would regard going across the border into Lancashire as being 'foreign travel'.

Typical of most governments who all normally seem unwilling to break-up any part of their bureaucracy and instead replace/rename it with something even bigger 🤣 But also any unpopular government, facing street protests, will also seek all means to extend state control. So nothing surprising in any of this; disappointing yes, but surprising no!

A case of setting off with your 'eyes wide open' rather than your 'flies wide open' perhaps ? 🤣

Sex workers in places like Pattaya have a shelf-life, and 33 is on the older side anyway. Past 30 and it becomes harder to compete with the pretty 18 and 19 year olds arriving in Pattaya 'off the bus'. It becomes harder to get the same flow of customers; instead they have to rely more on their 'regulars' and hopes of, at least a level of, sponsorship. Some will find other work in Pattaya, others will return home. The sensible ones will have built up savings; and/or maybe already invested in land or a house back in the village while others, living more hand to mouth, go back home with very little. The other observation that I would make is that many of the boys already had other part-time day jobs. For example, one lad from Cupidol I know, worked daytime shifts as a (junior) chef in a local hotel kitchen, but would be at his bar by 8pm, scrubbed-up and down to his tighty-whiteys. Others at Sunnee had regular daytime jobs in factories and construction, and their bar work had always been essentially freelance, but potentially offering welcome supplements to their income. Low season, also saw many others getting part-time jobs, etc etc. Only the most successful were ever only full time stage performers and/or sex workers. Many boys have also always regularly returned home for protracted periods during low season. So I think the 'case-study' presented above risks painting a very simplistic picture of the complexity of a sex-workers life in Pattaya for example. They are already pretty resilient to the vagaries of their 'working lives', although the pandemic closures and restrictions will have hit them far harder than they had perhaps hitherto experienced. The question for me is how many will eventually decide to return to the bright lights of their bars and partying, and how many see the pandemic as the catalyst to move on with their lives.

I can see them all now in their little 'pinnys' standing outside Pook Bar on Soi 6 trying to sell cookies to passing punters ....... 🤣

Mask porn? haha

Now, I have not read this book, so my few observations are only based on what I have read on this thread. In Pattaya I think the bars can 'de facto' create loose 'family groups' around the bar, where boys talk and support one another (aside from any physical liaisons that take place). Similarly groups of bars, JC, Sunee, Boyztown etc, can extend those groups. The boys all seem to know each other and talk to each other and often support and help each other in straightened times. Secondly I think social media, FB groups, Line groups etc. can also provide some discrete sense of gay community. The number of Thai orientated gay FB groups are increasing, with boys posting to get the validation or encouragement from other boys for their looks, sexuality, etc. There are often many thousands in each group; some boys members of several groups. As a farang joining such groups I am a mere observer, just vicariously enjoying the provocative pictures (well as provocative as FB allows that is) the boys put up. They create the same sense of 'community' as we do ourselves as members of this (and other) gay Thailand forums; perhaps more so.

Lets hope their filming gives appropriate recognition to the various contributions by the International Communities in the rescue efforts this time.

So presumably this now means the end of those sleazy non-uniformed guys with their satchels going from bar to bar collecting tea monies ? 😂 And of course it will also mean the end of traffic police just picking on farang violators and ignoring adjacent Thai violators, etc etc. 😆 But it all sounds so good as you read it 🤣

So lots of horny guys now corralled together with nothing to do all day .....humm?, I wonder?

Be interesting to see if they follow through with this, rather than it being merely a 'face-saving' action as their officers had been caught 'red-handed' in trying to extort large sums of money from the suspect and killing him in the process.

If I like the lad, their smile, overall appearance, fun personality, etc.; I will happily work with whatever they have been blessed with,

Fundamentally, all the boys we meet in the bars and have fun with, also consider that they are 'working'. Keeping us happy in the bar and back in our rooms is all work to them, whatever 'connections' we think we make with them as individuals. Even the boys I have been seeing for years still regard me as a 'customer', albeit now a 'good customer'. Things can become quite friendly, but take away the money and that friendship rapidly fades. Can it ever grow into more than work?, well yes it obviously can, but that's far from inevitable.

This is one of those feel-good posts - well it is for me. I guess we all have moments of self-doubt, when we question our abilities, judgement, even our sanity, And then we read of people like the man reported here and realise that the the world is filled with people even more stupid and less sane than ourselves, It's kinda reassuring in an odd way!

There were some disturbing video clips circulating showing this last police action and the extreme violence they met out to any hapless 'protestor' they encountered. Dark days for Thailand I fear.

Yes, as others are commenting, as you get older, life, or at least healthy life, becomes far less certain than it used to be in our youth, and similarly life's opportunities recede with each passing year. So just go-for-it and enjoy the moment, whether that moment is destined to last a week, a month, a year, or maybe many years?

Doesn't inspire much confidence does it ...............

Oh Lord but I feel the same frustration, although, in comparison to some of you, I was lucky in that I was there for New Year 2019/20, so its only been an 18 month gap for me, but I had become so accustomed to being able to visit once or, more usually, twice a year at times convenient to me, that the uncertainty over my next trip gnaws at me day by day, week by week, and month by month as this pandemic rumbles on and Thailand's vaccination programe still looks woefully inadequate. In theory, now I am both retired and double vaccinated, I could go back tomorrow and face the 14 day quarantine/sandbox, so what is holding me back? The answer is my concern as to what I would find if I did go back now, with the mass restrictions, bar closures and so many boys gone back home. In truth I am perhaps still rather naively hoping that there will be a time when everything will just go back to normal, and the Pattaya I arrive back at will look and feel the same as the Pattaya I left in January 2020. However, in all probability that will never be, not quite the same anyway, and I just have to come to accept that, and be prepared to 'take it as I find it' as I did on my very first visit back in 2009.

Might some of this pressure on AZ be because they have lost confidence in the Chinese Sinovac vaccine that they had been relying so heavily on?

Or just get in a decorative Christmas elf for the festive season (in this case the beautiful Guitar),(hope the picture is ok here?)

Haha so true, my favourite 'husband' of many years, Vit from Scandic Massage, is a bit of a fashion victim and loves his skin-tight jeans over his skinny legs. But frankly I could go and make a cup of hot tea and drink it, the time it takes for him to remove them. But usually I just stand and watch and tease him, especially (for a supposedly straight boy) when his cock is already hard and visibly clamouring for release from his undies as he battles with his jeans. But it is always worth the wait of course; god how I miss that boy!