PeterRS

I did not know departure slots had to be paid for. But I did know that slots are allocated by air traffic control and frequently the actual departure time can not be dictated by that departure slot but by problems at the arrival airport which is too busy to take you. You cannot take off until the departure airport receives a signal from the arrivals airport. Still, that makes a nonsense of the fact that other aircraft can be late arriving and therefore also late leaving. If there is one thing that drives me nuts it is the announcement that departure has been delayed due to the late incoming aircraft. Why not be honest and tell us why the bloody plane is late? So these late arrivals can knock the system for six. How many times have you had to wait on landing because the scheduled departure from your arrivals gate has been delayed? So the gate is not free and airports cannot move entire planeloads of passengers over to another gate. This has happened to me several times at London Heathrow where sitting on the tarmac has lasted up to 30 minutes. And how many times has your aircraft left the gate only to spend up to an hour on a taxiway because so many aircraft are scheduled to take off at the same time? Thats happened to me several times at JFK, McCarran at Las Vegas and La Guardia seems about the worst. Flying today requires a great deal of patience and if you have connections also of flexibility. The worst is when you have to connect between carriers. Even when they are in the same airline alliance, expect little help and baggage that does not arrive when you do. I wish the controlling bodies would introduce the EU system of payment penalties for planes being late. €200 and more would make a longish delay a lot more bearable!

Since the automatic entry will be for Thais only, that still leaves 32 million of the new cards to be processed each year - and going up annually. I cannot believe the new card will reduce the amount of information required on page 1 of the present form. Since the info on the back page is only for the TAT and since Thais already have their own queues, I see longish queues for farang well into the future. Those manning the Thai only lines can of course be diverted on to the farang lines. But the Thai lines usually require only a small number of desks. So not much difference at least in the next year or two.

This has to be the easiest issue to solve. Every departing flight has to file a manifest of passengers which is then speedily sent to the arrival airport's computers. Air traffic controllers know exactly the route of each aircraft, its arrival time, number of passengers and their passport info. Predicting arrival surges should be a piece of cake if the various departments actually talk to each other. But it also depends on there being enough Immigration officers to cope with a surge. Bangkoks two airports have never had enough to handle peak periods. From my observation at DMK, another problem is that many incoming passengers fail to complete the TM form accurately. Instead of being sent to the back of a queue or a waiting area, they are permitted just to complete the form in front of the officer. That is plain ridiculous as it wastes so much time. Then there is the entry form itself. The basic info is the same as that required at many airports. But the info on the back of the entry form is totally unnecessary and only there because the TAT want some statistics. Little wonder many passengers complete it incorrectly. I heard the form is being redesigned. I certainly hope so. I cannot see automatic entry being extended to many more countries because of the need to check visas. Loads of passengers are eligible for short stay visas on demand. I suppose computers could be linked to automatic barriers but I cannot see that happening. After all, TIT. Last point. This weekend has seen chaos at several European airports due partly to more stringent EU security requirements. As at DMK passengers have been complaining about missing flights and connections. Anyone who assumes that they can make a connecting flight from international to domestic and vice versa on low cost carriers within about a couple of hours needs to think again. I dont think low cost carriers refund your cash if you miss a flight only because Immigration has taken 4 hours instead of 30 minutes. You then likely have to cough up or a new ticket. No matter what the minimum connecting time regulations state, I now leave at least 4 hours for connections.

Not sure when you are travelling but later this year one of the off ramps at DMK will be closed and replaced. Travellers to the airport are being advised to allow 3 hours to get to the airport from downtown Bangkok. A trial closure was held on the first three days of this week. The results will be discussed at a public forum on August 8. Sounds like vehicles using the expressway will not need to leave so much time but there seem certain to be delays. Best to wait till the authorities announce when and for how long the closure/repairs will take place. http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1296891/don-mueang-off-ramp-closed-for-repairs

I cannot imagine anyone checking in a bag from anywhere to anywhere without it being as securely locked as possible. What happened at Swampy happens all over the world. Its not that long ago that London Heathrow was nicknamed Thiefrow. As a447a points out most of the zipper bags so popular nowadays are quite easily opened and then resealed. When you take it off the conveyer belt, youd have no idea it had been opened. Some of these bags are much more secure than most, but then these ones are also a lot more expensive. One of my beefs is the paltry amount of cover travel insurers allot to loss of baggage. For holidays that may not be much of an issue, although with some countries insisting laptops and pads go in hold baggage the value of the contents increases. I have rarely seen any policy that covers contents for more than about US$2,000 and then there is a deductible for each item! Require a couple of business suits, cold weather clothing, electric shaver, camera etc. for a 10 day business trip and even $4,000 is unlikely to cover it.

I doubt if anyone who lived through that particular crash can ever forget it. For years Asia had led an almost miraculous economic boom. When criticised about the regions crony capitalism, Singapores founding Prime Minister had been fond of admonishing the west for not recognising that democracies are not all the same. Asia adopts capitalism with Asian characteristics, he was fond of saying. When boom turned to bust he was forced to eat his words. When the Thai economy crashed it had been a disaster waiting to happen. Asian economies were propped up greatly by crony capitalism, property bubbles and unhedged low interest foreign currency borrowings to avoid high interest rates at home. I met one Thai in 1991 who had been a bar boy in the mid 1980s. By the early 1990s he owned three condos, all with borrowed money. The baht was fixed to the US$ at 25:1 but interest rates were high. So major Thai corporations and most wealthy individuals borrowed massive amounts of dollars and Swiss francs at something like 2% instead of the much higher baht rate. The Thai government could have stepped in to lower its rate or reduce the dollar peg. Crony capitalism meant that would not be allowed to happen.Those same government ministers were on boards of companies and had themselves substantial overseas borrowings as had their friends. So those idiots who should have been jailed opted to spend the countrys foreign exchange reserves to prop up the baht. George Soros and his colleagues had mounted an attack on the baht in the spring of 1997 which the Thais had managed to fend off. With almost no money in the kitty, when the next wave of attacks came at the end of June, there was no money left. In all 90% of the countrys foreign exchange was wiped out. The Thais were in shock. Few realized the austerity measures that were to come after the IMF loan was approved. Few realized the baht would lose 50% of its value in less than six months. With the exception of China every other Asian country devalued their currencies by more than 20%. Banks and finance companies around the region collapsed, property companies went bust by the truckload, stock markets collapsed, the government in Hong Kong at one time raised bank lending rates to 300% to fend of speculative attacks and would later spend over $100 billion purchasing its own shares when speculators went on a short-selling spree. The speculators retired bruised and very much out of pocket. What happened should have ben a wake-up call to the west. It remained asleep. So the 2008 world crisis occurred and many are still suffering. It is an absolute certainty it will happen again. Greed is universal.

There can only be two ways of creating those statistics. The Immigration form gives no possible indication of how much an individual is likely to spend. It only provides detail to show the type of tourist visiting the Kingdom. But its one use is the TM number. For many tourists, the biggest single item of expenditure is hotel and its associated costs. Places of accommodation take copies of that TM form. I expect they will also have to send on to some authority actual expenditure related to that form on certain items like rooms, meals etc. Since the average tourist never needs to show that TM card again (unless they have to visit a hospital for example), the only other way statistics can be measured is guesswork. And relying on guesswork is ridiculous! An Australian staying at the Mandarin Oriental might spend Bt.10,000 a night on accommodation and Bt. 4,000 on in hotel F&B. It might therefore be assumed hed spend another Bt.8,000 a day on shopping, outside eateries etc. Yet another Australian might spend just Bt. 800 per night for accommodation but the same Bt.8,000 per day on boys, booze, meals and shopping. On the other hand he might be a bit of a skinflint and spend only Bt.3,000. How on earth can any statistics department know?

Agree its a fun bar at least in my experience. But after chatting with a few guys there it was obvious that most dont want to do anything outside of the bar except chuck wow! Did I visit on an off night?

My breakfast is quite simple usually. Bran flakes with banana and blueberries, orange juice and then my espresso and croissants. I agree with Alex. The croissants in Laos were great. Those in Vietnam were also very good. Surely they cannot be difficult to make. Thats why I cannot understand why most Thai cafes and quite a few good hotels serve just thick lumps of dough.

I dont think I have ever met a money boy who was on time! In Bangkok 45 minutes is not unusual and some have been an hour late. Even business meetings I have attended in Thailand have rarely started on time. One or more attendees are always late, usually blaming the traffic. I am always tempted to suggest that as the traffic is permanently bad they might consider leaving their office or home 30 minutes earlier. But I am certain this would achieve precisely nothing. The Thais are like the Balinese in this respect. I heard many Balinese talk about their attitude to time as rubber time!

Do any cafes/restaurants have really crisp crumbly croissants? I love to finish breakfast with one or two with lashings of marmalade and a large espresso. Almost everywhere Ive tried that offers them have what feel and taste like thick cold lumps of dough. Nowhere near the taste of even a moderately decent croissant.

http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/topic/11152-when-did-gaybutton-stop-being-stop-being-a-gay-forum/ As Scooby's post on this thread makes obvious, there is now a problem with uploading photos using the photobucket site. For whatever reason the site has suddenly closed all 3rd party hosting of imaegs from its members libraries. To continue you need to pay $400US per year!! Unlike this site where photos can be uploaded directly to posts this new photobucket policy has seriously affected the gaybutton site which requires using sites like photobucket for adding pics. Seems GB is asking members to repost travel reports using different upload sites. This renders links to the old pages useless. For those interested the Bhutan and Nepal trip reports recently mentioned in the above thread are now replaced by http://gaybuttonthai.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8577 http://gaybuttonthai.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8579

The Priority Lanes are available to quite a number of people in addition to the over 70s. First and biz class passengers on most flights, APEC Biz Travel card holders and others. So it always amazes me that there are so few at those desks. After all a Qatar 777 will have around 40 in biz class and an Emirates A380 up to 90 in first and biz. Some will be transferring to other airlines, but it always seems whenever I arrive that most of these passengers really dont know about the Premium Lane. They certainly dont seem to go near it.

Quite agree. But some guys may not enjoy that option especially if they have an executive role in the company they work for. If your office is going to get in touch, lay down rules before you depart about when and how they can contact you on only urgent business. Then try to set aside a maximum of 30 minutes every 2 or 3 days to get the work done.

There is also a similarly well illustrated article on visiting Nepal http://gaybuttonthai.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8511 I heard there is a chance of Nepal following Taiwan in approving gay marriage. Did you hear that santosh108?

Not much discussion yet on the effects of stress on the body during a lifetime. A doctor once told me that she had come across so many cases of mild illness being caused as a result of stress in a job, at home or with a partner. Unless the patient took steps to relieve that stress it would build up over time and could have a serious long term effect in the ageing process. There are also the results of stress caused through living in stress-inducing cities. For most guys I reckon finding ways to relieve such on going stress is less easy than just giving up smoking or big Macs, if only because many are not really conscious of the stress. Things like regular exercise and yoga then become more important. And of course regular trips to Thailand!

Well thats not how it came out! I suggest you could have chosen your words more carefully to better effect.

Just checked - the company's name was Island Caprice. Boring vdos but cute guys. I may be wrong in suggesting they moved to the Philippines. I think that must be another company. Seems they just stopped making movies. They are still available for purchase on line or pay per view. I see from their website they are now also distributing tons of western vdos. But the Thai ones despite the boys being cute are slow. slow. slow! There was another company with much better vdos, Thai Twink Productions, now defunct I believe. I ordered a few from them but was concerned they might have a problem delivering to Bangkok. Island Caprice would not deliver to Asia because, the owner told me, they would be first pirated and then appear on the internet within 24 hours and he'd lose sales. I told the people at Thai Twink that I was a bit concerned about delivery. No problem, a nice young man replied. He himself was a recent Thai graduate working in California and happened to be coming to Bangkok the following week. He will hand deliver them! He was a very cute guy of 25. To thank him, I took him to dinner, something clicked and he then spent the night! Now that is what I call real Thai service!

Not sure if I picked wrong days or forgot vinapus rule but on the two occasions I have visited Senso I left very underwhelmed, Way overpriced and little enthusiasm during and after the massage. Only plus factor is its location. But I wont go back.

Nope. About 15 years ago I did have a correspondence with the guy in California who produced a lot of vdos under a label I have forgotten. I just wanted to know where he found the boys for the vdos which were all very definitely filmed here in Thailand. He told me they mostly came from 3 or 4 Pattaya bars. I think this particular company has given up filing here and moved over to the Philippines a few years ago. He did tell me a bit about all the boring parts of filming. He did it to make money, not to ogle the boys. I really have to laugh at the naivete! I am sure you are correct. The police will laugh long and loud. Not at the Thai. They will laugh because yet another farang has landed on their doorstep with lots of tea money being demanded before they let him off. And when the farang gets on his high horse shouting its all legal because I had his permission, the boy will have disappeared and the cops will insist he is underage. Pay up my friend or youll find yourself in jail for an undetermined time. Then there is the embarrassment of your photo being displayed in all the media behind photos of this boy. Without an ID card theyll claim he was underage. With an ID card theyll claim he was coerced. Thats the Thai way. Whichever, you will find yourself behind bars. And most likely you will also find yourself on an international sex offenders list. Think before you snap!

I think if you had ever gone as far as trying to fulfil that fantasy youd have found the whole business more than boring (pun intended!). With a story line, you need characters. You need somewhere to shoot (pun intended!). You need a camera, a light or two and some makeup. (Ever seen movies with guys with shiny faces?) Then you need different camera angles if you are not going to bore the pants off the viewers (oops!). So it will be a constant stop, start, stop, start, why cant the boy get erect again, perhaps a pause for some bodily function appearing unexpectedly., quick shower, cant get it up again ... Then you sneeze at the exact same time as the cum shot and the camera is out of focus! Try getting him to cum again without hanging around for half an hour or so. Glad you have dropped the idea. Leave it to the pros. Enjoy the boys.

I have never seen the need to take photos. Thats not to suggest that one off is like another. The great thing is that most are different in their own way and are enjoyable for different reasons. I dont have a particularly good memory but I do tend to recall those who were special even from many years ago. That memory is all I need.

I completely agree about hand luggage. Most airlines have regulations and maximum dimensions for hand baggage. In my experience, usually economy passengers are restricted to one wheely bag or backpack that can go into the overhead bins and one briefcase type bag for a laptop for under the seat. Regularly I see passengers with an overlarge wheely bag, a backpack, several large shopping bags and duty free. This seems worse in Asia than Europe and the USA. US airlines seem to stick much more to the rules. What pisses me off there are the passengers seated near the back of the plane regularly put their bags into the first free overhead bin space they find, even if it is 20 rows in front. That screws up the entire system and results in other passengers having ti check their bags. I still don't agree about backpacks. Flight attendants have to check your boarding pass on entry to the aircraft. It would be a simple matter for them to ask passengers to take backpacks off and hand carry them.

Thats a stupid allegation. You are telling me I am making all this up? BS! The fact that you are responsible in the way you walk along a plane aisle with your backpack on does not mean that another tourist with a very large backpack overpacked to the gills does not cause problems for other passengers with thoughtless turning around? You need to do some more research on some of the other Asian airlines especially those from China and the Indian subcontinent. Dont criticise when your experience is quite limited!

Not likely. Most of them are straight and working under cover!