Gay Thailand

Thais pronounce the name of the beer as “Sing”, the name of our erstwhile prime minister as “Shinawat”, and the name of our erstwhile airport as “Suwanapoom”. In the English transliteration an extra syllable is added at the end of the words. Why is this?

I had a conversation today that got me to thinking. I said I doubted that the majority of guys traveling to LOS for sex will stop coming. They will keep going to the place they love. However, the country has tried to make families the cornerstone of the tourist industry. When asked today if I would bring my family over here in the next year or two, my answer was a resounding NO. No way would I risk them getting stuck over here or heaven forbid caught up in some other conflict. I would not recommend this for anyone with a family. What about you? Even if you still want to continue to travel to LOS, would you recommend your close family to come?

I hope that the moderators will forgive me for taking the above quotes from the; "New Bar Opening Tonight in Sunee Plaza thread and then, starting a new one with them here. My sole reason for doing so is that my post here, has nothing to do with the opening of that particular bar. It instead concerns something completely different and the subject I have raised in it, is one where I will be very interested to learn what the opinions of the members here are, in regard to it. I have seen mention of the "Sunee Scoop Reporter", not only in the above quoted thread, but in a couple of others as well. As a new member here, I was wondering just who this "Sunee Scoop Reporter"…

The Constitutional Court announced this morning that it had found the Ruling Party and some smaller parties guilty of vote buying at the last election. The government must now disband and the Prime Minister and some his colleagues are banned from politics for 5 years. So, having got the country into this mess, the PM can now return to Bangkok and let others sort out the horrendous problems he has left behind.

I went to the new bar tonight. It used to be called TopMan. I will say the place had tons of boys and lots of movement. Not too many farang but I was early. The boys seemed to be having a good time and everyone was dancing and moving. I hope this place keeps going and is a tremendous success!

I would like to suggest that the pinned Topic about Latest Airport Info become unpinned since the information is out of date and some may wish to post opinions about the topic now. Possibly a new Latest News could takes its place since PAD has / will clear out Wednesday at 10am

Tonight around my Thai friend asked me to go out and look at the moon. It was beautiful and I was told the 2 small bright lights above it were not stars but planets (Jupiter and Venus)?????? I tried to take a picture but it did not come out well. Maybe someone with a better camera would post a picture

The BBC has just announced on its website that the airport demonstrations have been called off by the PAD and passenger flights will resume at Suvarnabhumi on December 4. No other information as yet about how many flights and which airlines.

Per thaivisa! Thai Airways is cancelling all its Bkk bookings thru Dec31st. Ticket holders are urged to rebook for later dates.

BAR LA CAGE SOI V.C. PATTAYA Diary for December. Every Day. Happy hour until 9pm. BOGOF! Buy One Get One Free! (Beer Chang = 32.5 baht! House Vodka & Tonic = 40 baht!) Saturday 13th. Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. Afternoon concert at the Mahidol University. The program includes music by Bartok and Khachaturian. Tickets only 300 baht. Depart the bar 12.30pm. Saturday 20th. School Disco. From 9pm. The boys will be in their School Uniforms for this end of term Disco. All the hits of the 60s and 70s provided by Scratchy and his mobile disco. Sunday 21st . Cla…

The Nation reports the agreement with PAD and AOT. Checks have started and flights out may resume tomorrow. From "The Nation" The People's Alliance for Democracy Tuesday agreed in principle to cooperate with the Airports of Thailand Plc to reopen services at the Suvarnabhumi International Airport but the PAD will not end its demonstration there. The agreement was announced at 3:30 pm by Somkiart Pongpaibool, a PAD leader and Vudhibhandhu Vichairatana, chairman of the AOT board of directors, following their meeting. Somkiart announced that the PAD would allow flights to resume at the Bangkok international airport after AOT technical officials check technic…

I had occassion to visit the US Embassy in Bangkok after an all night train ride from Ubon (more on that later in another post). I arrived at 1:00 as they were reopening for the afternoon (open 1:00 to 2:00). There were only about 20 Americans to be seen, and many of these were for routine notary etc. I had a 1:15 appointment, got right in, filled out my forms, paid my money, and was out within 40 minutes (it took longer because I had new pages in passport added, and that takes some time to print and stitch them into your passport) The staff was very friendly, and was helping several people with airline problems and explaining the 2000 baht per night refund from …

I just went to both "The Nation" and "Bangkok Post" to see any breaking news after reading the print versions. I did not see this which was reported on Reuters. Cargo flights will resume from BKK as soon as cargo transporters want..... It seems information from outside sources rather than the 2 main English sources in Thailand are more quickly updated

The following appears in the BANGKOK POST: _____ 350,000 Stranded The top official at the tourism ministry said on Monday that 350,000 foreign visitors and Thai tourists are stranded inside Thailand by the airport closure, and the number is increasing daily. "Around 350,000 passengers remain stranded in Thailand since the closing of the airports," said Sasithara Pichaichannarong, permanent secretary at the tourism ministry, in an interview with the AFP news agency. That figure includes Thais who were booked on flights out of the kingdom. About 10,000 Thai nationals are estimated to be stuck abroad by the airport closures, an official from the fo…

Tonight, in Sunee plaza, is a grand opening of a new go-go bar. The location is the old Topman. The bar is called COCKTAIL. The advertisement that they were handing out says, “Do you like COCK or TAIL, we have both. Open daily from 2 pm to 2 am.” The premier is November 27 at 8 pm.

I just spoke to my Representative at Northwest Airline. They said they are issuing refunds and no change fees for anyone needing or wanting to change tickets that are booked up to Dec. 15. She also said that they were getting regular updates and that they are doing all kinds of rebates, exchanges, etc to make sure all passengers are accommodated. I needed to change my ticket and they did so with all fees waived. They have other incentive's as well and are trying to work with everyone.

I wish owners of bars had a better way to let people know about their special events. However, I have been told by the owner that he is having a one year anniversary party since he took ownership.

Apparently the PAD has decided that the airports are the places to fight their battle. The occupation of Government House did not cause near the uproar that the takeover of the airports is causing. It seems clear they have no intention of giving up the airport sieges any time soon and have called out all the "troops." At the present time there simply seems to be no end in sight and they mean to make the airport situation even worse than it already is. The good news, if you can call it that, is so far they have made no moves to disrupt the U-Tapao airport, but at this point it wouldn't surprise me if they make moves to close down U-Tapao as well. It seems fair…

Silom Soi 4 Festival 2008 Silom Soi 4, Bangkok are pleased to announce the Silom Soi 4 Festival 2008 will take place 25 ~ 30 November. Every night there will be a special party in The Soi featuring many of the themes that are so well loved by our friends and customers. As we all know, the Bangkok Pride committee cancelled this year’s Pride Festival but ever since the original Bangkok Gay Festival started in Soi 4 back in 1999 we know how much our friends and visitors love the parties that are held. Therefore, to ensure that nobody is disappointed we have decided to hold as many of the traditional events as we can in Soi 4. Tuesday 25 Nov: Thai Cabare…

The following appears in the BANGKOK POST: _____ Rush to Get Out By Post Reporters Tens of thousands of stranded passengers have been squeezing into the only terminal at U-tapao airport to catch flights out of the country. Tents have been erected outside the terminal to provide shelter to the passengers and more mobile toilets have been installed. Traffic to the airport, in Rayong's Ban Chang district, has been backed up for several kilometres. Capt Kiatkul Suwan, who oversees the airport, said immigration officers are working around the clock. On average, about 50 international flights have left the facility daily after the airport wa…

Been taking some photos of the boys you know in the Land of Smiles? Well, lets see those smiles. Post them here and get a chance to win a bottle of Scotch Whiskey. 1. Post your photos here and post as many as you like and want to enter. 2. The photo must be original and taken by the poster as it is a Smile contest, hopefully it will have a boy or girl with a beautiful smile. 3. The photos will be judged by a group of impartial judges with the top 10 selected 10 days before the All Forums Meet and Greet. 4. The top ten will be voted on by the posters here and the winners will be the ones with the most votes. Only one vote per user. Prizes will …

If you need to follow the special announcements issued by Thai Airways, you can do so at the following link: http://www.thaiairways.com/Homepage/announ...a_situation.htm

I just saw on TV that aircraft are now leaving BKK. Now that the planes are out of the airport, airlines will start flying from regional airports to get stranded passengers home. I did not realize until now that the airlines had so many aircraft on the ground at BKK they did not have the capacity to fly...just not enough planes available?????? It changes by the hour so who really knows...

The following appears in the BANGKOK POST: _____ At U-Tapao: 'They have killed tourism' By Newley Purnell, Agence France-Presse U-Tapao - Not even the dancing girls provided by a local hotel could cheer thousands of travelers as they tried to flee protest-hit Thailand through this Vietnam-era airbase. "This is my first time in Thailand and I probably won't come back," said Glen Squires, a 47-year-old tourist from England, casting a glum eye over the crowds. "What they've done is shot themselves in the foot." Since Friday, the U-Tapao naval base about 190 kilometres (118 miles) southeast of Bangkok has been the only way in or out of the co…

I having wondering for the last few days why the pro and anti government groups choose the colors they did. The PAD (anti-government group) choose yellow. They say they support the monarch and have many middle class, royalist members. So yellow makes sense since many feel it is the King's favorite color. The UDD (pro government group) has decided on the color red. It is said that this group supports the government in power and most of those supporters are also very loyal to Thaskin who some say wanted to lessen the power of the monarch. Red however is more associated with communism which some still fear as in the 60's and 70's Thailand was fighting rebels who wanted …