PeterRS

If people don't like being watched while they are swimming or just cooling off, then pity the poor guests at the luxury Anantara Hotel on Rajadamri (built as The Peninsula in the late 1970s - the lobby is almost identical to that in the flagship Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong - who sold it to the Regent Group which was taken over by the Four Seasons and then sold again to the Ananatara Group!) Even by the early 1990s you could swim there with no buildings overlooking you. Now there are multi-storey apartment blocks on two of those sides, the hotel on the third and a soi on the fourth with tall buildings on its opposite side. I suspect most in-town hotel pools have buildings overlooking them unless they are riverside hotels or on roofs. (Oops, forgot! The Rose Hotel Residence pool is on the roof!!)

No longer confused, this was the post I had earlier written and withdrawn. These were my comments on Mister International which I now realise is going on in Bangkok No intention of going whatever. Besides, all contestants are I believe straight. And earlier in the month Mr. Singapore announced his withdrawal from the pageant. He announced on his Instagram account that he was withdrawing because he was not being given financial support. Besides there is still a legal battle going on as to whether the title Mr. International belongs to Thailand or The Philippines. The founder, Alan Sim, was Singaporean, and the pageant was legally based in Singapore when it first started in 2006. Sim died in 2022 without making any provision for successsion. Accordingly two countries now claim they have the right to the title Mr. International - the Philippines and Thailand - and both run their own similarly titled pageants! The Philippines are now the rightful legal owners and use the original logos, trademarks and copyrights. Its current and previous First Prize Winners were both Spanish. The First Runner Up last year was from Peru, Estefano Balarin. On Instagram he subsequently posted a scathing two page letter denouncing the organisation! I think you can hear the audio of a lady summarising his complaints in the link below. https://www.instagram.com/reels/audio/1332823098481822/ Thailand then created a new company with completely new logos, trademarks and copyrights. It then changed the rules and allowed married men and fathers to join its pageant. Last year it crowned a Nigerian as First Prize Winner. So the Winner this year is only entitled to call himself First Prize Winner Mister International Thailand.

Trump held a long phone conversation with China's Xi last Friday. According to the Washington Post there has been agreement on several issues incuding trade, fentanyl and TikTok. Analysts have noted there was no mention of Taiwan, and fears have been expressed that Trump has deliberately held up a previously agreed weapons package including drones and lethal munitions to Taiwan. Some time ago Congress approved up to US$1 billion in military aid annually for Taiwan. Trump though has several times questioned Taiwan's dependence on the USA, this despite the fact that during his first term weapons sales soared beyond US$10 billion for the first time. If the shipment of weapons is delayed for much longer, surely the American right wing will close ranks with most of the Democrats and call "foul". After all, denying aid to Taiwan is effectively providing support for Beijing and the possiblity, however implausible, of an invasion. Trump is playing politics yet again by attempting to push China on trade. This time I think he will be in for a shock.

If you think that was old, my first stay there was in 1980! This is the pool in the old hotel with the excellent restauant Ruen Urai at the end. Now there is also The Rose Residence. Its entrance is on the left as you approach Ruen Urai. I believe The Residence also has its own roof top pool. Rates presently seem to be around US$100 - $110.

Apologies. I had written a post about the controversy surrounding Mister International. Wrong pageant!

It is starting to look as though an all-out war may be on the horizon - but between which parties? We know about Russia and its continuing invasion of Ukraine - an incursion which Putin said would take days and that was all of three-and-a-half years ago. It is also 20 years ago that Putin offered this advice - if Ukraine wanted to join NATO, "we will respect their choice, because it is their sovereign right to decide their own defence policy, and this will not worsen relations between our countries" But of course that was at a time when the President and parliament of Ukraine were in Putin's pocket. The election of Zelensky and the reality of the possibility of Ukraine actually joining NATO completely changed all that! Putin has turned turtle! But he is still left with a problem entirely of his own making. The British Ministry of Defence recently stated that Russia has lost one million men killed or injured since the Ukraine war started. Even allowing for over-inflating figures for propaganda purposes, the independent Russian outlet Mediazona has identied the names of more than 110,000 killed. But it believes actual figures are much higher. The problem for NATO countries is that if it were to come to war with Russia, Putin could play the nuke card. He has thousands, many presumably already aimed at European capitals. Against that only Britain and France have a total of around 500 warheads. If tactical nukes were used, would an ultra-right wing Trump administration fulfil its duties under the NATO Alliance by standing by all other NATO countries, knowing that Russia also has the capability of bombing many major American cities? Personally I would doubt it. On the other hand, to resort to nukes would certainly anger some of Russia's allies, especially China. Even a limited nuclear war close to its territory would be anathema to the geriatrics in Beijing. So Putin definitely has a problem as his aircraft without any warnings fly over NATO airspace. One or more will surely soon be shot down. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/jun/22/one-million-and-counting-russian-casualties-hit-milestone-in-ukraine-war

How true! Allegedly the advance she received from the publisher was US$20 million - double Joe Biden's advance for his book! 8-figure sums for two losers!

Wall of rain reminds me too much of "wall of sound", the term given to the backing on albums produced by the late and creepy Phil Spector. He created this by adding many orchestral instruments to the usual guitar combos. He even characterised his method as "a Wagnerian approach to rock and roll," a description which will probably horrify Wagner fans. Mind you, that approach was a huge success in the 1960s and 70s. as other producers jumped on the bandwagon along with artists like The Righteous Brothers, The Beach Boys, Dusty Springfield, Simon & Garfunkel, Sonny Bono, Dionne Warwick and some of the most famous ABBA numbers including "Dancing Queen". Spector even produced the last LP the Beatles ever recorded "Let It Be", the only one not produced by George Martin. But he seems to have become quite a loathsome person who died in 2021 while serving a 19-year jail sentence for the murder of young actress.

I'd go a lot further. "Trump truly fucked this country but others know how to do it in accordance with the Constitution and good, honest common sense."

If "girlfriend" is acceptable and almost universally used, "boyfriend" is equally aceptable. It's the context that is really at issue.

Ha! That's rich coming from a тот, кто говорит ложь.

Love the analogy. Can almost hear their roars here in Bangkok.

Those in the non-gay world call the LGBTQ community all manner of slurs and homophobic rhetoric, often writing letters of complaint. What do you consider were the worst? In 2023 and 2025 the BBC showed a dating gay show titled I Kissed A Boy featuring exclusively gay men. Although achieving mostly positive reviews, some viewers were mighily pissed off. One, John Chapman, wrote this - "Homosexuality is an unfortunate affliction which years ago was not tolerated & its practitioners persecuted. In this more enlightened era it is tolerated by most of society . . I find their proclivities abhorrent but if consenting adults with to do unspeakable things to each other in private that is their affair. However I take extreme exception when they flaunt their persuasion in public, especially when they try to promote it among the young. I object in particular to gay pride & lgbgt marches and pageants such as this, of which the BBC should be ashamed." That remark was made almost exactly 25 years after British TV showed the first episode of the landmark gay TV series Queer As Folk. In 2019 The Guardian rated Queer As Folk #13 in its list of "The Top Fifty TV Series of All Time."

I know we have had pages of information about prostate cancer over the last 3 years, the latest covering Joe Biden's cancer. Now tennis great Bjorn Borg has announced he has an advanced stage of the disease having already had an operation in 2024. And yet again it makes me wonder how is it that men over a certain age succumb to such a common disease For those who do not remember, in the 1970s Borg was then the youngest Grand Slam champion when aged 18 he won the French Open (Michael Chang later won it aged 17). The world of tennis quickly became gripped by the young Swede. With his long flowing fair hair and impossibly good looks, he was a rock star and teen idol rolled into one. "Borgmania" was the name of the game! In all he won 11 Grand Slam touranments by the time he was 26. Will today's two young greats Carlos Alcaraz and Jannick Sinner reach that number by that age, I wonder? I expect one will as records are there to be broken. But for Borg the ever-present stress, sacrifice and travel had taken their toll. He took three months off and then tried to return to the circuit. But for him the magic had gone. In the days when tennis players did not have teams of fitness trainers, agents and sports psychologists around them, Borg found himself totally alone. With no warning he quite suddenly gave that whole world up at that age of 26. In his new book Heartbeats: A Memoir, he relates all he could think of was how miserable his life had become. The joy had gone. He recounts how his own world then descended in a dreadful spiral. For several decades he quite literally disappeared to the extent he and his near impossible feats on the tennis court were amost forgotten. He cut all his ties with the tennis world, found a new group of friends when he moved to New York, Los Angeles and then Milan and as a result discovered a life full of cocaine, pills, booze and two near fatal overdoses. Embarrassed at his new self, he had avoided returning to Wimbledon, the scene of arguably his greatest triumph when he won the title in five consecutive years. After therapies to get rid of his addictions, he did finally return to Wimbledon for the 2000 Parade of Champions. As the former champions were introduced, Borg received the loudest ovation. He now returns amost every year. The book leaves nothing out. Following his 2024 operation for prostate cancer, the doctors informed him he had "sleeping cancer cells" which remained in his body. Like most who have been on such a roller-coaster in his life, he is now at peace and happy with his third wife, children and grandchildren. He has six-monthly prostate checks and remains in remission. Why the Memoir now? "The decisions I took in my life were stupid, so I wanted to tell that story." His wife asked him "What d’you want to put in it?" and I said, "Everything". At the end of the very long Guardian article, the writer confirms "It is a painful read". https://www.theguardian.com/sport/ng-interactive/2025/sep/18/bjorn-borg-tennis-quit-sporting-superstar

There is a general saying that all publicity is good publicity. I think, though, that this refers more or less to the here and now. Writing something that bad actors will return to in later uears is never a good idea if you have a desie to achieve something and what you write may come back to haunt you - badly!

I hate crows, that's for sure, the more so when they deprive me of 90 minutes sleep each day! But given all my decades of travels to see some of the world's greatest natural wonders, I can't really agree with your generality.

As a lover of many operettas which are generally light-hearted and end happily, may i suggest a more appropriate analogy is the "theatre of the absurd"!

Let's be perfectly clear what you wrote. I quote verbatim above. You have consistently lied about the situation in Ukraine and elsewhere. Now you lie about what is permitted and what is not permitted on this Board. To refresh your errant memory, the decription of what the Beer Bar exists for is - "Open to general topics not covered elsewhere including Current Events, Politics, Religion, Movies and other topics." You mention the forum's scope and imply again that politics is not covered. Wrong! Now will you tell us once and for all that you have lied? Or once again will you wiggle out of the truth and admit you made it all up (almost certainly in this case) or you came up with some Putin prescribed fiction like many of your other posts?

It seems there are more Chinese sites like the ones I have mentioned. But last night, in one of them for a time all five boys were naked (nothing much to see, unfortunately!) and two boys did a well-choreographed naked show with light sticks. It was the sort of show that used to be quite common in the bars in Bangkok a few decades ago. I am still confused over who they are performing for since there is clearly some sort of audience reaction.

I note you have still not responded! Where are the forum rule here that you quoted? It doesn't exist! And for that matter, you have also not replied to the quesion why on your sawatdee site you claim that it is "the most popular gay forum on Thailand and South East Asia." That is complete nonsense but you continue to use it. Why? Why lie? And why state "most popular?" As of 11:30 am today in Thailand, that site has had all of four posts in total today. Yesterday there was a total of 8. I am sure the dozen or so regular posters enjoy their contributions, which is great. And it is great that the site exists when there have been times when it looked like it might not be able to continue. So @Moses should be thanked for ensuring it continues. But the truth is the truth, and @Moses I regret to say is quite a stranger to that word judging by many of his posts here.

Yes, the loser in the last election has published her memoir, not something expected of a recently badly defeated Presidential pick. But it does hold some nuggets. She never wanted Tim Walz as her VP apparently, and was incensed when he "fumbled" a crucial answer in the VP TV debate. She actually wanted Pete Buttigieg! To have an openly gay VP would have been great for the gay community but would it have garnered any more votes? I wish i could be positive about it, but I suspect the MAGA jerks would have had a field day and it would have been a hindrance. As she herself eventually acknowledges - “He would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man. But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk. “And I think Pete also knew that – to our mutual sadness.” Not surprisingly, in the book 107 Days she moans on about Biden and his decision to seek re-election as being "recklesness". Why defeated candidates feel they have to open their hearts beats me. If she runs again, every word in that book will be scrutinised by the MAGA crowd - and that means it will do her more harm than good. Silly woman!

Solution found! These spikes stop the crows getting anywhere near the railing. They are smaller than they look in the pic. Not expensive and you can get them from Lazada.

I reckon colloquialisms and idioms are the most difficult for foreigners to understand. Decades ago when I had my first Japanese boyfriend and was visiting Tokyo every month, I got to know many of his Japanese friends. One evening, four of us were enjoying dinner and having a great time when I happened to ask, "Where shall we go after?" I suggested a disco as "I wanted to let my hair down." The young friend sitting next to me worked for a French bank but spoke very good English. After a slight pause he said, "Yes, I'm also thinking of growing my hair longer!"

Great stories! I thought the second sounded rather like when a person emits a particularly malodorous fart in a crowd of people. The offender then quickly looks around as if to check and work out who it might have been. "You see, it can't have been me!"

Now they have turned on the French President. They claim that his wife is a man. Considerably older than her husband, she taught at future President Macron's school. If I were the French, I'd tell that ultra right-wing bag of tricks to check their own First Lady first! But Macron has decided to send scientific evidence to a US court. How ridiculously stupid can people get?