PeterRS

I note that @khaolakguy still backs off providing any explanation for his use of the word "deranged". His post was also a pitiful attempt to persuade others to read just one thread when my post had specifically - and very importantly - referred to and quoted from two threads, one written in February. His comments were selective and inaccurate, and he chickens out of backing them up.

As one who still travels quite a lot (although not on cruises), I am frankly sick and tired of all the requests I receive to complete satisfaction (or otherwise) questionnaires. On my March trip to the UK, I stayed with a familly member most of the time. But I also had one night in London. With six flights, I had two questionnaires from British Airways, four from Cathay Pacific and one from the hotel. For last week-end's trip to Taipei, I have had two from China Airlines and two from the hotel agent - one for experience on arrival and one on overall experience at departure. I do accept that the opinion of other travellers can be useful. The problem I find is that so many different travellers have so many different expectations. So how do you assess the accuracy of questionnaire results? I trash some but in others will highlight any bad service or areas which could be improved. On the other hand, if I have had particularly good service I will always include that in my comments along with staff names. However, I also know that some travel sites deliberately manipulate their supposed travellers' comments. Years ago i used to value Tripadvisor's comments. Until i had the unfortunate experience of staying at the flagship Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore when attending a Conference. I disliked the experience from arrival to departure, but found that Tripadvisor had many one-line comments basically stating how wonderful the hotel is. I dd some research. I discovered that of something like 20 such comments, 16 were fake in that they had been inserted by staff at affiliate companies of the hotel. Getting in touch with Tripadvisor is not easy, but I wrote to their head office. Then, surprise, surprise, virtually all of those comments disappeared! Only after that did I read a Business Traveller magazine comment about how Tripadvisor manipulates its comments section.

300,000 marchers would be absolutely amazing. Somehow I find that number hard to believe - but then I was not there. Only a couple of years ago the numbers were barely in the thousands. PS: There is a vdo on an Indian website which clearly shows there were lots of marchers and lots of spectators. It merely states that thousands marched, but from the video it looks quite a bit more. Excellent news. As for the number 300,000, this is not a fact. It was merely a guesstimate given of the number of likely participants on another website thaipr.net and provided in advance by Waaddao Ann Chumaporn, Chair and Founder of Naruemit Pride and organizer of Bangkok Pride Festival 2025. He said, "We expect more than 300,000 Thai and international participants to join the parade." It took Taipei about a dozen years to build up to the 100,000 marchers mark. I guess that Bangkok probably had somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000. Even so, that in itself would be a huge advance on previous years. https://www.wionews.com/videos/thousands-march-in-bangkok-s-annual-pride-parade-1748781327294 https://www.thaipr.net/en/life_en/3605358

Participants is one thing - and a good one at that. But I wonder how many took part in the Pride March. That's also a key issue.

On May 2, the FGG announced ten finalilsts in the bidding for the 2030 Games. This is what is called "The Long List" and it is eventually narrowed down to about 3, I believe. The Denver site claims that the list has been narrowed to 2 - Denver and Perth after Auckland bowed out. How the bid process narrowed so quickly I have no idea! And since Vancouver already hosted the 1990 Games, I cannot understand why it is back on the list! https://www.denver.org/gay-games-2030/press-releases/denver-moves-closer-to-hosting-2030-gay-games-as-bid-field-reduces-to-two/ Adelaide, Australia Auckland, New Zealand CapeTown, South Africa Denver, Colorado, USA Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Frankfurt, Germany Melbourne, Australia Perth, Australia Taipei, Taiwan Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

You may well be right in your comments re Taipei. But I cannot agree with you about Tokyo. I hope I am wrong, but from my experience it just is not going to happen any time soon. There certainly have been quite major developments with more attention being given by various of the 23 wards in the city to their LGBTQ communities. Shibuya was the first iin 2017 and it has been followed by 12 others. The mayor of Suginami ward, Sakoto Nishimoto, told the Japan Times last December that it is "essential to enshrine same-sex marriage in law." The mayors of nine other city wards have called on the government to review the rights of same sex partners. This follows the ruling in the Tokyo High Court last October where the presiding judge stated that not allowing same-sex couples to marry is unconstitutional. He added that the ban is "a groundless legal discrimination based on sexual orientation" which violates two articles of the Japanese Constitution. In Japan, judges have no rights to overturn laws. Only the national Diet (parliament) can do that. And this is the crux of the problem because the Prime Minister and a considerable number of politicians are against giving same-sex couples the right to marry. Japan has basically had just one party in power for most of the period since the 1950s and that party has a considerable number of ultra-conservative right wing members. https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/12/29/tokyo-ward-mayors-call-for-more-rights-for-same-sex-couples/ I just believe that the developments in LGBTQ rights have been too slow to host World Pride. Besides, although the Tokyo Gay Pride Marches started way back in 1994 (almost ten years before Taipei started its Pride March), the official Japan Gay guide website estimates that this year there will only be 1,100 marchers! That no doubt disguises the fact that Pride events around this huge city, which include a large number of entertainment and other spectacles, attract even more than Taipei's 200,000. That perhaps gives greater importance to the 47.2% of the population discovered to be in favour of same-sex marriage by a 2023 Stanford University Study. As with many research studies, how many really hold this view as opposed to those who only feel they should hold the view is unknown.

With respect, I think the Hong Kong Games were nothing like a good example. Please remember that Hong Kong bid for the Games back in 2016 and the city was awarded the exclusive right to host them in October 2017. Sixteen other cities around the world had been part of the bidding process. That surely is an indication of the amount of tourism revenues the Games can bring to a cty. People in Hong Kong at that time were overjoyed. But Hong Kong then was massively different from what it was soon to become. This was not primarily the result of the city's lock-down measures to combat covid, although these did push the Games back by a year. It was a result of huge political changes in the city following years of protests. In 2020, the laws were changed in Hong Kong. Basically the new National Security Law had a very distinct "I love China" element. Hundreds of activists were rounded up and jailed, while others fled verseas where they remain. Beijing was determined that never again would Hong Kong permit demonstrations against Hong Kong government policy and actions. Briefly, it also did not want the Gay Games! But it was stuck with them. It attempted to have them moved out of Chinese territory, but failed. In February 2022, the leader of Hong Kong's bid stepped down. The FGG Committee then realised it had to do something or the Games might not even happen. They were probably right, for in the month prior to the Games, seven local politicians called for them to be banned as they might infringe on the National Security Law. Even before then, in June activists had called on the FGG to cancel the Hong Kong Games. Before that political mess, the organisers had offered half the events to the city which had come second in the 2017 bidding, Guadalajara. By splitting the events into two in different continents ten thousand or so kms apart, the FGG basically shot itself in the foot. No spectators were going to spend hard-earned cash commuting between the two cities. Naturally they would choose one or the other. With Hong Kong becoming politically far more dicey, it was inevitable that virtually all the spectators chose to go to Mexico. Besides, as @hojacat has rightly pointed out, with zero government desire then for Hong Kong to host the Games, it ensured that as little PR as possible was undertaken. Even some Hong Kong people did not know they were taking place! In my earlier post, I got the date of the 2026 Valencia games slightly wrong. They start on 26 June and last for 12 days. An estimated 12,000 sports participants are expected along with up to 3,000 for the cultural events. 100,000 spectators are also expected. For the Games held in Paris in 2018, only 33% of spectators were French of which 18% were from the city of Paris. Of the remaining 67%, 33% came from the USA. Given these figures are from 7 years ago, I think they actually prove that the Gay Games can be a significant money spinner for the host cities., better even than the much shorter World Pride Events. Taipei's Pride March certainly attracts huge crowds, but of the 200,000 marchers, certainlly the vast majority are from Taiwan. I can find no figures, but I expect the number of incoming tourists to be less than around 10%.

@floridarob you are entitled to your opinion which I know you frequently express. You can also call me an ass or whatever you like. But when someone calls one of my posts "deranged", that poster clearly has a reason for it. In which case he has a duty to explain that reasoning both to me and other members to whom it has been expressed publicly. If he does not, @khaolakguy is merely showing his very distinct cavalier attitude to posting by other members without taking the issues expressed in them anything like seriously. He has covered up his obvious concern at his statement because all he has done is suggest others read the posts. That's just a cop out! Other posters have never used the word "deranged". He just makes himself appear foolish! This may be a "dead horse" to you. It is not to me!

The Olympic Fitness Club at the Pathumwan Princess Hotel at the end of MBK is one of the largest in the city and has a membership consisting of many younger Thais. I have stayed at the hotel but did not visit the Club. I am told it is more than usually cruisy.

Statistics for the period May 1 - 14 show that rainfall was 95% greater this year compared to the 30-year average. In a Bangkok Post article much of the rain during the month fell in what it calls "rain bombs". These were caused by a stronger southwest monsoon in the Gulf of Thailand coupled with a stronger monsoon covering the north of the country and part of the south. Then between May 25 and 27 the deluge of rain was reminiscent of the severe flooding of 2011. All this is odd because May is not generally a month for heavy rain. Associate Professor Seree Supratid, director of the Center for Climate Change and Disasters at Rangsit University, has said that the weather phenomenon La Nina has altered its usual pattern this year with climate instability and unpredictable seasonal shifts. However, he suggests that rainfall will ease this month and next, with August and September seeing drier weather. The rains will then return in October as usual. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/3041376/rain-bombs-revive-fears-of-2011-floods

Condom use - or the inceasing lack of it over the last dozen and more years - has become a topic occasionally covered by this Board. If I read posts correctly, the general view seems to be that all sex has risks, but with relatively more recent medications like PrEP and treatments for early detection of some other STIs like syphillis, the need for condom protection is now far less. But there are other STIs out there and, as discussed in this thread, gonorrhoea is one which now has to be taken much more seriously. I remember the pre-HIV days when we all took risks and maybe some of us caught the occasional STI which was relatively easily treated. Then came HIV-AIDS which quite literally put the fear of death into us. I may have reduced my sexual activity but certainly did not stop it. I just made sure that I had a constant supply of condoms and lube both at home and on my frequent travels. I knew there were some countries I visited where gay sex was pretty much a taboo subject. I would have felt more than awful had I knowingly or otherwise infected a young guy realising he would die as a result. Even when AZT and the anti-retrovirals became more common, I was never without a condom and that has remained pretty much the case even today. With a young partner in Thailand and, with his knowledge not being sexually inactive when travelling, his health and the simple desire not to pass on any STI I might otherwise have picked up I believe this is being sensible. I know others do not agree. I know too that the lack of condom use, especially among Thailand's younger generations, is especially worrying. I hear of saunas outside the centre of Bangkok where condoms are rarely if ever used. To those of us who lived in the later 20th century, this always seems odd, given that it is the popularity of condom use that has brought the birth rate down from nearly 6 per family in the late 1960s to under two today. (One reason why we now see so few Thais in the gogo bars when you never saw non-Thais on their stages even 30 years ago). Condoms are in common use in Thailand. Yet the government seems to do nothing to get this mesage across to the nation's youngsters. It is desperately sad.

Further to my earlier post, the Denver Bid Committee website has announced there are now only two finalists on the short list for the 2030 Games - Denver and Perth, Australia. Third on that list would have been Auckland, New Zealand. Officials from the Federation of Gay Games will make final visits to the sites next month and it is expected that the announcement of the 2030 winning city will now be made at the end of the next Games being held in Valencia, Spain next month. https://www.denver.org/gay-games-2030/press-releases/denver-moves-closer-to-hosting-2030-gay-games-as-bid-field-reduces-to-two/

I envy your trip. I am not sure when you will be travelling but please remember that last year Greece suffered from dreadful fires. https://www.timeout.com/news/where-are-the-fires-in-greece-what-wildfires-in-kos-mean-for-your-trip-070224 Also the gorgeous island of Santorini has been subject to many small earthquakes this year. https://euroweeklynews.com/2025/05/30/planning-a-trip-to-santorini-heres-what-the-earthquakes-mean/

What a shame that no one seems to have attended the Pride March on Sunday! I was in Taipei that day but my partner went with some friends and they loved it, but it was the first one he has attended and so I don't think he had any expectations. Anyone know how many participated - i.e. marched? Khaosodenglish has a brief description along with a few photos. Other sites have some basic information. But I can find absolutely nothing about the numbers marching. And on google I find nothing from the Bangkok Post! https://www.khaosodenglish.com/life/2025/06/01/thailand-kicks-off-pride-month-with-a-parade-in-bangkok/#google_vignette The reason I think this is relatively important is that Bangkok has anounced it will be in the running to become the first Asian nation to host the 2030 Gay Games event. Actually it would not be the first. Hong Kong (yes, Hong Kong!) was co-host of the 2023 Games (postponed by a year due to covid). Denver has already announced it will bid for 2030. But of the previous 10 Games four have been held in US cities and I think Denver, despite a lot of backing, may miss out for that one reason. As I wrote a few days ago, there has been no news about Taipei perhaps applying to host the Games. With 200,000 marching in their annual Gay Pride Parades and with its having almost totally changed the island's approach to the LGBTQ community very significantly over the last 20 years, my gut feel is it would have a better chance of hosting than Bangkok. The host city will be announced some time next year.

Bravissmo! I think that is one of the funniest and most apt ways of handling such a question.

Fair point. I did send @bkkmfj2648 a PM response the same day that I first read his post which outlined my views in detail. Naturally PMs are private affairs and I asked that the matter not be dragged into the main forum. Please note I have had absolutely no response from @bkkmfj2648 to that PM which was sent more than five days ago.

You have had a day and an evening to respond to my question - - and no response from you who usually are pretty quick off the mark. But you may well have been busy. Still, I will appreciate knowing why you consider one post vindictive and the original post made by the other party is not? Or perhaps you did you not read the original post?

The comments I quoted are not cut and paste! And you have failed to answer my simple questions: how is my post above "deranged"? And how was my post in the Dangers thread "condescending"? Seriously, I am interested to know. As I have said, I accept all criticism for anything I write. But criticism has to have a reason - and you have made quite aggresssive comments but provided no reasoning.

The comment I made above from my friend presently in Tokyo coes from a German site Der Farang dated 24 May. I'm sorry i do not have it to hand.

Oh really? And did you read the original - the full original posts? You mean one was not vindictive or any such similar word against me and my posts? I really do wish to know the difference.

And that I submit is absolute nonsense! Since you refer to the original posts, it is only right that they be repeated here to avoid posters checking back several pages. The subject of the OP was, let's recall, the dangers of sex when travelling in South America, (in my view a perfectly legitimate concern and one which has been echoed in many, many posts in various threads). In response to a point made by @vinapu, @bkkmfj2648 wrote - . . . this is also my exact philosophy, and is the primary reason as to why I have not yet ventured to some of these South American countries. I truly do not enjoy any experience where the hairs on my neck or arms feel the need to stand up - it is just not worth it, if I cannot relax and enjoy the environment that I am in, - especially as an elderly retiree, with who knows how many years are remaining in my life - why accelerate the eventual end by venturing into a perhaps dangerous situation?? Life is already too short. And that as far as possible dangers of sex was in my view an entirely reasonable response to which I replied with a simple question - @PeterRS - Merely out of curiosity, is sex an essential part of your travelling? I spent a fabulous month travelling around four South American countries and sex was rarely on my mind. It was a fabulous trip and I saw so many natural wonders. Let's also recall that I then added a second post when @floridarob asked how old I was when I went to South America. I replied - @PeterRS -60. I do go on other trips where sexual adventures are part of the agenda. For South America, the only reason was sightseeing [in ther words i was basically agreeing with @bkkmfj2648]. I had never been before, knew no-one and spoke hardly any Portuguese or Spanish. 9 cities/locations and 16 flights over a month (including 4 getting there and back) and each day was packed with activity. No time for anything else @bkkmfj2648 then responded with the contentious post which referred back to my original question and started - Dear @PeterRS, Your condescending question, framed as a mere curiosity, carries an unmistakable whiff of superiority, as if the pursuit of physical intimacy while traveling is somehow beneath the refined appreciation of culture you so clearly pride yourself on. It’s a tired trope, implying that those who acknowledge sex as part of their human experience are somehow less enlightened or incapable of savoring the world’s deeper offerings. This condescension, cloaked in intellectualism, betrays a rather narrow view—one that dismisses the complexity of human connection in favor of a self-congratulatory asceticism . . . As I said, @khaolakguy, you consider the above exchange was "condescending" on my part. Oh really? Please explain why. What in my question to @bkkmfj2648 - bearing in mind the discussion which had gone on between us beforehand - was anything other than perfectly simple? And what was "deranged" about my response above? I really wish to know.

The strange thing I found was when I came to the Citizenship country, it was all over the place. No alphabetical order and, as far as i was concerned, impossible to find GBR (or Hong Kong where I am a permanent resident). I tried several times. That's why I clicked on Scotland! when it suddenly appeared! The lady at the Immigration counter seemed to accept that there are still a few bugs in the system that need to be ironed out!

Not at all. I understood you perfectly and had I come from the same background, I would probably have dealt with the issue exactly as you would have done. But then while I know a bit about Japan and had the joy of working there for some years, I come from a country where we are proud of our heritage and, to a certain extent, of our own accomplishments. That's not to say we deliberately go out and brag. But we do not put up with intensely personal insults, the more so when they are virtually the opposite of what one person has already said/written quite recently about us. Indeed, when they are to all intents and purposes outright lies! I will say till the cows come home, I can take criticism as much as anyone else. I may not like it, but if I could not take it I would not be a member of this or any other Board. There is a line which I draw - and I believe that line is actually covered in the board's Code of Conduct. When someone has expressed almost profuse gratitude for my postings, lauded my style of writing and even compared it rather fancifully (but delightfully) to "great music", and when that poster then turns turtle and trashes me personally (not, please note, my writing style) by stating I personally showed "condescension”, “superiority”, “pride”, "self-congratulatory asceticism” and other negative qualities, for me that line is well and truly drawn. Hence my post.

Thanks

Apologies! I missed the deadline for adding this to the earlier post. I take it from your comment that you are perfectly happy for another poster to attack your character. Not what you have written but your person. Posts i have made have been criticised on this board many times which I take as part and parcel of contributing to a Board which permits a good deal of free speech. But the post I responded to was a direct attack on my character as I made perfectly clear when choosing the descriptions used and the specific words and phrases used. And it you fail to see that, then that is your judgement which I would respect, although definitely not agree with. I forgot to thank you for your earlier kind comments on my past postings which I happily do now.