PeterRS

What is happening today is hardly comparable to the unspeakable horrors of the Third Reich. Leaderships in some countries may now be a bunch of right wing fascist thugs but they are still worlds away from inflicting such horrific sufferings on such an immense scale.

I wonder in what wilderness gay men would have found themselves in the 1970/80s without that publication. OK it was not always 100% accurate but it was my bible for many years not only in Thailand but in quite a few other countries around the world. I cannot now recall how I discovered it but it opened my life to so many amazing places and encounters.

He's already had his say on the larger issue which is unwelcome in this country.

I object to the use of "ugly" in the description of a criminal. What amazes me is that his sentence was so light, the more so that in addition to the two rapes, multiple other offences were taken into account when the sentence was decided.

All babies whose parent or parents entered Tuol Sleng prison were murdered at the Killing Fields. According to Douch, this was so that they would not live to avenge the death of their family. He revealed this detail at his trial. However, this form of horrific murder was not confined to The Killing Fields. in The Gate Francois Bizot writes that he saw this occur several times in the countryside where he was captured.

It's really good that you can discuss and be open about the country's history. It has suffered much since the King Sihanouk years when he first aligned the country to China. We also have to remember the utterly ghastly effects of America's undeclared war on Cambodia. It was this which created the political vacuum that basically allowed the Khmer Rouge to gain power. I am surprised that you mention the urban areas because the Khmer Rouge basically emptied them of all citizens. Millions were marched at gunpoint into the countryside. When there, they were treated dreadfully. There are even true reports of babies being murdered by being thrown against trees. May I recommend that you read two books of the many which have now been written of the Khmer Rouge period. The first was written by the journalist William Shawcross whose father was the British prosecutor at the Nazi Nuremburg Trials. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia condemns the US administration literally for the way it interfered with Cambodian politics to install a regime more to its liking, and then destroying the country with its intense bombing campaigns and putting that war in context of the Vietnam invasion. As you will know, Hun Sen who led the invasion was a former Khmer Rouge leader before he fled to Vietnam. The second is a much more local description of the horrific life in the countryside during those years, The Gate by Francois Bizot. Bizot was a French ethnologist who was taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge and chained in a jungle camp for many months. He describes in horrific detail how dreadfully the Khmer Rouge treated their own citizens. One interesting part of this book is that Bizot's captor was one of the most notorious members of that murderous gang, Comrade Douch. As the great author John Le Carre writes in the foreword, "Now and then you read a book, and, as you put it down, you realize that you envy everybody who has not read it, simply because, unlike you, they will have the experience before them." When leavng Cambodia, Bizot had to leave behind his Cambodian wife and child. He never heard from them again; no doubt casualties of the Khmer Rouge. Douch went on to become the commandant of the infamous school turned into a Khmer Rouge Prison in Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleng. Of the more than 14,000 to 17,000 'enemies of the regime' who were imprisoned there, all were subject to interrogation under torture to gain false confessions. Only 12 of the prisoners came out alive. The rest were murdered and sent to the Killing Fields. If you have not been to see the school which is now a Museum, that is something you must do. For whatever reason the Khmer Rouge took photos of their prisoners and they line the walls. Hideously gruesome. The list of regulations at Tuol Sleng

The night we were there, it was not just the owner who smoked: all the boys at his table did as well! This was even though there were two large signs in the bar statng NO SMOKING!

Just remember folks that not only is the Philippines subject to several typhoons a year - most of them major and with devastating effects in some areas - it has just yesterday reported a 7.8 earthquake. That really is a big one. The country is on the so-called Ring of Fire, the 25,000 mile undersea fault that rings the Pacific from the east of Australia to the centre of Chile. Roughly 90% of the world's worst earthquakes occur in this region. Each year The Philippines experiences around 7,000 earthquakes. Most are too deep or too small to be felt at ground level. This is at least better than Tokyo where when living there I felt minor quakes every six weeks or so. According to various sources, the safest place from earthquakes in The Philippines is Davao City, but Siargao is also mentioned. Volcanic activity is also present with the 1991 Mt. Pinatuba volcanic eruption being the second largest in the 20th century.

One of the most inconic artists of the 20th century has passed away at the age of 88. Brought up in the grime of northern England still recovering from the deprivations of the Second World War, in 1961 aged 24 he discovered California, the year after he realised he himself was gay. He was entranced and mystified, amazed that there was a gay scene and a freedom he could never find in England of that time. He enjoyed everything, even just looking around at the houses and the swimming pools, especially the pools. Arguably his most famous painting is a A Bigger Splash, a very 'sparse' painting with as its subject the eruption of water made by someone who has just dived into one of these pools. Much of that painting was inspired by two photographs he had seen in books. Another 'pool' painting from 1972 Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) is his most expensive work to date having sold for US$90.3 million in 2018. In a BBC website commentary today Dominic James Bilton, the co-leader of the Queer British Art Network, said - Of his early works, "Those works are so queer, so sensual and sexy and playful and joyous," adding they also show the "domesticity" and "dull aspects of gay relationships". Hockney was "normalising same-sex relationships... that we take for granted", Bilton suggests, adding the artist showed that gay people "are just normal people... doing normal stuff, looking at our partners and thinking: 'oh, you're beautiful'". And as an article in today's Guardian points out - Being gay was just part of the truth he lived and painted. It wasn’t a big deal and he’d be upset if we remembered him as “Britain’s first openly gay artist”. It’s exactly his relaxed and untroubled depiction of a sexuality that was illegal in early 1960s Britain that makes his art so insouciantly subversive. From his splashy 1960-1 painting Doll Boy that confesses to his passion for Cliff Richard (“very attractive, very sexy”) to a composed 1968 portrait of a mature and confident couple, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the development of Hockney’s art in that decade of revolution is very much about finding the right style to show gay life as it is. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpq393dz535o https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jun/12/david-hockney-death-tribute-feast-visual-pleasure

The occasion I wrote about was the only time I ever saw a group of boys around one table sharing a bottle with someone I assumed to be a customer. I actually think Solid failed partly because it was in the wrong place. Granted it was near Golden Cock and Nature Boys but they never had more than a handful of boys as I recall and they were more raunchy than Solid. Solid probably had too many boys with too high a wage bill. And partly also because the layout was not very customer friendly and few people knew about its facilities. Stage on left side as you entered, boys sitting on bar stools on the right, and then about five tables further in. There was also a mezzanine level where you could play around with a boy or boys, but I think hardly anyone actually knew about that. Bad PR in my view. Perhaps that's why over 2 or 3 years we never saw more than two tables occupied, albeit we were only there on Sundays. A P.S. on Barbiery. I have no idea why it gave up its great location opposite Soi Twilight. But it then moved to the Golden Cock/Nature Boys soi on the first or second floor of a new building almost directly across from Nature Boys. We thought it was a disaster! The owner had significantly reduced the number of boys and increased their ages. No longer twinks. There was zero atmosphere in the place. Even the waiters almost growled at us. Such a shame and unsurprising it did not last long.

Solid actually had two mamasans. There was the one you noticed in the tiny host bar just to the right of Dicks. The other actually left a couple of years earlier to go and work in Dicks in Pattaya! Not sure how long he stayed there. In another thread, one poster laments the situation when one customer buys a bottle of whisky an then monopolises a number of the boys, probably some of the more handsome ones. I noticed this once in Solid. One farang had six of the dancers (i.e. about half of them and all the best looking ones) sitting around one of the small tables, chatting and joking as they drank from the bottle. After 30 minutes of this, I told my friend I was going to ask when the farang would be releasing the boys to do their jobs. Admittedly, there were probably no more than six customers of which we were two. But we were regulars. The farang was perfectly polite, pointed out that he was actually one of the two owners of the bar and when he'd opened the bottle there were just two other customers there. Within minutes he had the boys leave their glasses on the table and interact with the other customers before returning if they were not offered drinks by the others. I don't think we ever saw Solid with more than about eight customers and so I actually felt sorry for the owner. As a bar it just did not take off with a volume of customers which could have made it even remotely profitable.

A friend and I used to visit Solid Bar almost every Sunday but I think the bar did not appear until the end of the 2000s. It never had more than a few customers but the boys were friendly and it had two rooms at the top for additional activities. We always had a good time there. Sadly one boy I really liked so much disappeared. I asked the owner where he was and he told me he had to fire him because he was taking drugs. Sadly!

I am certain this question has been asked before, but not for quite a time. For those who visited Bangkok decades ago (and this is just Bangkok - if someone wants to start a thread on Pattaya, please do so in the Pattaya thread), what was your favourite bar - and why? I pick out two I have written about before. 1. Barbiery on Suriwong opposite Soi Twilight (mid-late 1980s) With around 100 boys, the bar seemed always to be humming with customers, especially at weekends when extra seating had to be added. On the two stages the shows were usually fun. Most of all, I cannot recall a boy not smiling. And I never had a dud off. I even took one for a few days to Hong Kong where I lived. 2. Apollo Bar at the end of Silom Soi 4 (early 1980s until Hotmale opened in Soi Twilight) Earlier than Barbiery, I discovered this small bar above what later became Sphinx. I had a big crush on the student bar tender but he was not offable. There can only have been about a 12-15 strutting their stuff on the catwalk and, as with Barbiery, always smiling at their fellow bar boys and the customers. As with Hotmale, the pants came off and the boys danced nude from around 9:30pm. Again I always had a great off and never a dud. The boys always seemed to enjoy themselves.

The eldest of His Majesty The King's daughters Princess Bajrakitiyabha has passed away after three years in a coma. She was only 47. She collapsed in December 2022 while exercising her dogs. Her doctors attributed it to a severely irregular heartbeat, caused by a mycoplasma infection in her heart. Her mother is Princess Soamsawali. Wishing the Royal Family condolences at this difficult time. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzzndx780o

Probably won't get far in your thinking as you won't get your Marriott points LOL

Bangkok Airways planes became very boring on the outside. This is the one I took to Luang Prabang in 2003. And another I took from Toronto to Montreal in 2006. I first took a small twin prop DC3 in 1964. Never had any problems with them.

I winder if the boys on the bike were fined for not wearing helmets?

I quite agree. Yet how does the murder of 15 men, women and children seem to you a lesser crime than a man knifed by an immigrant who, though seriously ill, remains alive as I write and a riot resulting in the burning of cars and a house? There is absolutely no call for violence, but we have to accept we live in a society where some, often led by politicians with a specific agenda, will always seek some sort of retribution. It reminds me of the case that led to violence in Southampton last week. I had not heard of the knifing and murder of the 18-year old British student Henry Nowak last December until seeing television footage of anti-police riots. Nowak had been walking home from a party when he noticed a Sikh Vikram Digwa and his brother. He was particularly interested in a ceremonial knife that all Sikhs carry. He asked if he could photograph it. Digwa than knifed him four times while his brother called the police, telling tham he and his brother had been racially abused. When the police quickly arrived, Nowak was lying on the ground saying he had been stabbed and could not breathe. Police bodycam footage shows an officer trying to find a stab wound but then placing Nowak under arrest and handcuffing him, all this as Nowak claimed he could not breathe. Only then was medical help summoned. Medical experts say Nowak would not have survived the trip to the hospital. The racial abuse had been a ploy to take resonsibility way from the brothers. Digwa was sentenced last week to jail for life with a minimum sentence of 21 years. As Britain banned many types of gun after the Dunblane massacre of 16 young schoolchildren and one of their teachers 30 years ago, it seems that knives may soon be on a banned list - and not before time in my view. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvpv2xylgeo

With all the people I have known with dementia, it has started with a short group of words. "And what are you doing now?" Not asked once but at least four times during a reasonably long time over coffee or a meal. I remember watching a very moving movie about dementia and especially the start of losing memory. Iris with Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent is the real life story of the writer Iris Murdoch. It starts with her at her writing desk and suddenly unable to bring to mind one word she knows but cannot locate in her memory. One becomes two . . . and so on. A very different movie than the much more recent one with Anthony Hopkins The Father. Referring to that excellent Guardian article, one of the ladies I mentioned earlier had been a ballet dancer in her youth. Placed in a care home and with almost no memory, one of her children took her to a dance class geared to the elderly. It was, she told me, immediately as though she changed. She clearly loved the class – and I assume the interaction with others. Yet when it was over, she was back to what had become her normal care-home self. I'm sorry I do not have details of the cost of the care homes outside Chiang Mai. I know they were relatively inexpensive when my business associate had her friend accepted for one. But then I do not know which package and what extras he might have needed. I'll try and find out more. This is one. https://www.homerlyseniorliving.com/senior-care-services-thailand/

Coming from a man who lives in Sydney where not many months ago gunmen slaughtered 15 Jews, including a 10-year old girl, celebrating hanukah on a beach, that comment is rather uncalled for IMHO.

Thankfully, none of my relatives have suffered from this ghastly illness - so far. But I knew three lovely ladies - one with whom I stayed on my annual visits to London for 16 years - who contracted the illness and then died from it. A few years ago I met up with the daughter of one. I made the mistake of asking "How is your mother", aware that she had been in care for nearly three years. Her reply was "for my siblings and myself, our mother died two years ago." Her mother's mind had completely gone. Since then two more lady friends have had Alzheimers diagnoses. (Does the illness affect more women, I wonder?) Additionally I have sometimes written about a lady here in Bangkok with whom I have done business since 1982. We have a mutual Thai friend (athough much more casual in my case) who is gay and had been in a relationship with a Thai guy for 14 years. Three years ago he developed dementia. Within days the boyfriend had disappeared taking with him their car and a few household belongings. My friend managed to get him into a care home close to Chiang Mai where she told me he felt very happy and content. Another who lived and worked in London is now in Chiang Mai very close to death. He was diagnosed in 2019. Although he had been married with two children, in 2000 he divorced his wife and started a relationship with a Thai guy living in London whom I shall just call Somboon. With care homes in the UK being horrendously expensive, Somboon bought a house in Chiang Mai and they moved there during the first year of covid. I had known my friend as both a colleague and close friend since 1978, so I have been up to Chiang Mai to see him and used Facetime at other times. In this case, Somboon has stayed with him and with the help of two young carers will be with him till he passes away. He now has no memory at all which is all so terribly sad. We all have to make our own decisions as to how we might face the onset of dementia. Personally, I could not let my partner go through all the pain and angst of looking after me daiiy given that he has a good job. I would hate myself if I had to make him give that up. And the care homes I have heard about near Chiang Mai certainly seem to look after patients extremely well from what I have heard.

There comes a time when children have to be banished from ones lives if only for a time. Bye baby!

i agree with @Mavica. There is almost certainly more to this story that has been revealed. The driver's language sounds Russian.

Another day. Another list. This time it is CNN reporting on Time Out's list of the world's best cities for food in 2026. A number of major changes from 2025. New Orleans was top last year and is now nowhere to be seen. Thailand remains in second place. Medellin has dropped from #3 to #20. Paris, Madrid, Montreal, Shanghai, Lagos, Porto, Jakarta, Marrakech, Cairo, Riyadh, Mumbai, Abu Dhabi, Naples and San Jose have all dropped off the list since last year. That to me seems a great many in just one year. So how is the list drawn up? Time Out claims - “The cities on this list are known for their ingredients, iconic cuisines and deep-rooted food histories that have influenced how people eat around the world,” Gil said in an email to CNN Travel. “They’re not just where food lovers are flocking today; they’re places that have drawn travelers in search of great meals for decades.” To get a clear idea of which cities were foodies’ favorites, Time Out surveyed 24,000 local residents across 150 cities worldwide, questioning them on the quality of restaurants and food, affordability at eateries and the culture of the city. Editors and food experts from Time Out evaluated the findings and only included the highest-ranked city in each country.

Ah! But you must beware of the deep. Strange things lurk down there especially when there are childish people around. Hahaha!