PeterRS

A few thoughts. Taiwan can get pretty cold during the winter. Not unusual for the temperature to fall to around 10C when the winter monsoon blows. Morocco too gets quite chilly especially if you want a popular spot like Marrakesh. The seaside resort of Agadir might be better but the temperature will not go much over 20C at noon. But then the same is true of the Canary Islands. Certainly a lot better than northern Europe but nothing like Thailand. Have not been to the Maldives for ages. As the link posted by spoon illustrates, it is a totally Islamic country. Not sure if it is still true but when we were there islanders were not permitted to staff the resort islands. They were kept isolated on Male and their own separate islands. Staff then came mostly from Sri Lanka and southern India. If you are there with your bf, there will be no problem for the 2 of you. As anddy suggests if you expect to find boys to while away a few hours, better hope there will be a cute guest. Staff are out of bounds. Best perhaps to write off this winter, save the cash and then splurge as soon as conditions permit.

A few letters and an insincere apology? I doubt if CNN, the New York Times and all the other media will print anything. Old news! The media just dont print apologies unless they are in a tiny paragraph hidden in inside pages. A cursory look at the CNN and BBC sites shows up nothing. There is an article in The Guardian. But by repeating the idiots false allegations and re-highlighting Thailands laws, he comes out of it more as saint than the sinner.

Talk aobut shooting yourself in the foot. This is really going to help Thai tourism recover once Chinese social media goes to town on this. Madness!

The hotel was fortunate that this moron did not have a gun with him when he made a fool of himself in the Resort. More worryingly however. How on earth is it possible that a man with a criminal record, who fired off his gun in several locations and claimed to be a federal agent can find a job teaching English in a Thai school? What background checks were made before he was able to find any kind of job in the Kingdom? So he lost his job. Do I care? Not one jot. He brought all this on himself.

If the Beijing rulers merely did a lot more to remove the stigma of homosexuality they could solve this problem at a stroke.

Such a sad time!

I wish in Thailand the left hand would occasionally talk with the right. Just a couple of days ago we are told that a limit of 1,200 would be placed on visitors coming in each month. Since we are now in October , even tho full details of that scheme are still to be announced, the cabinet seems to expect a maximum of 3,600. How does any industry body expect that number to inflate to 50,000? TIT

Reading about gay Thailand on various forums and books and considering Bangkok's physical development, I suspect most who were around at that time would say the golden era was from the mid 1970s until the early 2000s when the Thaksin Social Order Campaigns started. But vinapu is right. We can only talk about golden eras when we ourselves experienced the country.

So true. Ive stayed in several 3-star hotels in out of the way locations, nice bedrooms with great staff and excellent food. I gave them 5 stars. I never expected them to be like the Mandarin Oriental or Ritz Carlton hotels. Similarly I have given a couple of top hotels I have been lucky enough to stay at 3 star reviews.

If I travel to a new hotel, I do check Tripadvisor and the reviews on the site I made the booking. With Tripadvisor my rule is simple. I take a sampling of reviews. Any reviewer with less than 5 published reviews I will not consider. It has been known for years that some hotels on that site pad reviews with short rave reviews to get their hotel up the rankings. Almost all these reviewers never contribute a second review. Then I discard the best and worst reviews and take only the average of the rest. Usually it works quite well. But I agree that personal recommendation is best.

Have you actually read that article and the review posted by the man in question on Tripadvisor? Frankly, he is a total idiot. He wrote two reviews on Tripavisor one of which was taken down as contrary to the site's guidelines. He had basically defamed the hotels F&B manager. The one review that remains up reads like the ranting of moron. I have not read his google reviews. Anyone who marches into any hotel or restaurant expecting to drink their own liquor without some form of corkage payment and then makes an idiotic song and dance about it (it was only 500 baht for goodness sake) plus writes a string of abusive reviews full of vitriol that can be read publicly is a spoiled brat. The F&B manager actually waived the corkage to calm him down. But that was not going to stop this moron. In this particular case, Im glad he ended up in jail for a night or two. Had he had cash in his bank account or got some from his friends he could easily have avoided that. I also agree the hotel overreacted. But the idiot deserved it in this instance.

I think a few farang who work, own homes in Thailand and have been given permanent resident status do get some kind of ID card, but it is still different from those for Thai nationals.

If you speak fluent Thai and have a Thai ID card, perhaps! but I am guessing.

Even if you have a Thai bf you dont stand a chance. They just have no interest whatever in having farang on the premises.

None of my Thai friends ever go near the tourist commercial sex venues. When they go out they meet in bars which are devoted almost exclusively to Thais. Many cater to a mixed crowd but will have a specific gay section. There is also a vastly larger thriving commercial sex scene around the country which tourists and local farang never get near.

The reason most farang do not speak Thai is laziness. I know - I am one of them (although I do speak a little). If tones are the problem, why is it that many foreigners living in Hong Kong and the south of China can master the 9 tones required in Cantonese, or those living in the north the 4 tones in Mandarin? The same is true for grammar. Why should it be any more difficult for a foreigner learning Thai than an Englishman learning German? The grammar is not very similar.

Whatever happened about Anwar Ibrahim becoming Prime Minster as explicitly promised by Mahatir?

There is a reason for that. All have English as one of the official languages. I know some young Vietnamese whose English is vastly better than many of the Thais I have met. I read somewhere of a poster who happened to meet a middle-aged African American lady who had been hired through the American Embassy to teach English. Problem was her southern accent was so pronounced the poster had difficulty understanding her. How Thai kids would know what she was saying I have no idea! The problem with inviting teachers to come to Thailand is the Education Ministry seems to have pretty wide guidelines and leaves selection up to Embassies or other third parties. Some will be good. A lot will be average and many end up complaining about the heat and their conditions of employment.

I must be going blind! Really sorry but I cannot find any way of accessing special Msrriott Hua Hin 999 baht rates on that page. Only the Marriott Marquis in Bangkok. There are lots of other links to other offers but I must be missing something. On other sites there are staycation rates at 50% off but that is still well over 2000 baht.

Can I ask how you booked this rate? I cannot see it on the Marriott's own site.

Private hospitals are closer to empty than full. I was at the Bumrumgrad pharmacy about 2 weeks ago. Hardly any patients waiting for medicine. That particular hospital depends for much of its income on middle east travellers. Not one to be seen. Not surprisingly, Bumrungrad has reduced its private room charges by 40% and other services by smaller amounts. BNH also seems to have less foreign patients. A Thai friend was recently at the huge Ramathibodi public hospital. he said it was like a station at rush hour!

I wonder how true this really is. Daily I hear news reports that it is no longer a case of minimal risk for those under 50. This seems to be an illness with lingering side effects that can go on for months. And some specialists are now saying it is basically a disease that attacks the blood vessels rather than primarily the lungs. Whatever its effect on greater numbers of young people, we will presumably find out soon enough as thousands of US students have now contracted the virus thanks to the policy of opening up places of education.

Something odd seems to be happening on the inbound tourism situation. Apart from the talk of opening Phuket in October but with quarantine and the possibility thereafter of travelling to other parts of the country after a 3rd week of quarantine (none of this yet finally confirmed), I am surprised at a new TAT TV commercial being shown regularly on many of the True Visions TV channels, including CNN. Apart from making Thailand seem alluring, it stresses the fact it is safe. This campaign seems to be addressed to possible overseas visitors rather than local travellers. Then this morning I got an email from Qatar Airlines advising they have now resumed 10 flights a week from Bangkok. Only one-way tickets are offered at reasonable prices. In September flights to London are 10315 baht economy and 36470 biz class. I have no idea what has prompted these actions unless there is a possible opening up in the works sooner rather than later. But that is purely my read.

Agree with Michael and Anddy. A lot of people still wearing masks but many less than before, except on Skytrain, MRT and taxis, Thai Channa app rarely used. Only temperature checks seem the norm.

I have read a number of scientific papers over recent years about SARS. The American Journal of Biomedical Science and Research stated this https://biomedgrid.com/pdf/AJBSR.MS.ID.001017.pdf With SARS the world got lucky for two reasons. The period between infection and showing signs of symptoms was as early as 2 days. Then SARS was only transmitted once an infected person started to show symptoms. Testing and tracing was far easier than with covid19. Sorry I cannot speak for the other viruses you listed. Most studies state clearly that early and accurate transmission of information between health authorities is vital in countering new viruses. With covid19 that has been lacking from the get go. The Chinese authorities are definitely in the wrong. The WHO were slow off the ball. Governments and health authorities around the world were equally slow off the ball. We should not forget the first known identified case outside China was discovered in Thailand on 13 January. Despite CDC alerts between January 6 and 8 about the danger of travel to and from China, general travel from China to the US was banned only on February 2 but with a large number of exceptions. Italy also confirmed the first European cases at the end of January and banned air travel from China at the same time. By then this virus was well and truly out of control. Vietnam, Taiwan and Hong Kong were hard hit by SARS. Hong Kong has also had waves of various waves of swine flu. In these cases governments acted fast and set up departments to deal with future health emergencies. Taiwan has only had one small wave, Vietnam now two and Hong Kong three. But total numbers remain tiny compared to most other countries. At some future time I hope a lot of people around the world are going to be held accountable for the huge death toll and the coming economic catastrophes.