PeterRS

I lost two lovers as a result of AIDS. I had been madly in love with the first, a Japanese, and we had talked about living together. But because we were then living almost 1,800 miles apart, even though we were meeting almost every month and took holidays together, I suppose it was inevitable that he would meet someone else. In my early 30s, I could not understand how any young Japanese (he was 25) could possibly leave me for a man more than double his age - he was 52(!) I did learn later he wanted stability and eventually to start a business. His new partner gave him both. He did write to me to say what had happened and how sorry he was that he had hurt me. At the time it was no consolation. Although it took me many months to get over the anger and to a certain extent the betrayal I felt, I eventually realised it was as much my fault. It was the early 1980s was I still quite new to Asia and certainly to Japan. A few years later he called me and asked if we could meet again. He wanted my help re part of his little business. We had a joyful reunion dinner and became good friends. FIve years after we had split up, when having tea he told me he had been feeling well. He and his bf were leaving for a long summer in London when he would seek treatment if he did not get better. Two months later, I got a call from his partner whom I had never even spoken to before. My first lover had died of AIDS. I flew over for the funeral. Looking back, it seems odd that I had no worries about being infected. Perhaps I was in denial with HIV/AIDS being a death sentence. We had never used condoms, but then when we were together we knew very little about HIV. Thereafter I always used them. In the early 1990s I met a tall Thai student in, of all places, Babylon. Having had part of his education in Australia, he spoke fluent English with a slight Ozzie accent. Over the next year or so we were to meet frequently, each time becoming more besotted with each other. I even seriously thought of moving to Bangkok just to be with him. But he wanted to leave Bangkok as he felt too confined here after the freedom he'd enjoyed in Sydney. He was desperate to live with me in Hong Kong. I knew - and told him many times - that he and we would face many obstacles there, far more than in Thailand. He could not continue his studies, without an HK ID card he would be unable to find a decent job - and so on. But he was adamant. Stupidly I gave in. Although we did lots of things together and I loved having him live with me, it was obvious he was beginning to regret his decision. Just before Christmas we went to Australia for 10 days as I had a couple of days business. With frequent absences from our hotel, I knew he'd been meeting old friends and perhaps returning to some of his old gay haunts. After quite a bitter argument one evening, he told me he would not come back to Hong Kong. He planned to stay with an old flame in Sydney. And that is what he did. This time I realised I had made the wrong decision and for months I regretted it. What I should have been aware of was that the freedom he had enjoyed before I met him in Babylon had included quite a bit of unprotected sex. After he became sick, he returned to his Kanchanaburi home where died of AIDS two years later. But again i did not get myself tested. Finally on a trip to Phuket with friends, I went to a clinic and after three days learned I was negative. Yet despite all the bad feelings, I was later to put these totally behind me and as @Mavica pointed out earlier, just remember all the wonderful times we had enjoyed. Despite the sorrow at relationships coming to an abrupt end and of young lives being cut far too short, I am surprised that these memories do not fade.

I have written to several Pensions Ministers pointing this out. The real annoyance for me is that I elected to pay the full national insurance contributions even when living for much of my career overseas. I did this because I assumed I might at some stae return to live and work. I paid in full to protect my access to the National Health Service and gain the full basic pension (including its annual increases). Both were governmet policy when I opted to live overseas. Never in decades did any UK government department inform me that, despite my contributions over the years, access to the NH Service would be restricted only to those who returned to live in the UK for a minimum of six months a year. Nor that pensions would be frozen when first drawn down. As a UK citizen I am indeed penalised because I live abroad. A refugee to the UK gets better financial treatment.

Apologies. I should have written if in black he can top YOU. I am surprised that some mebers want everything fed to them on a plate and clearly can't be bothered actually checking sites. As I stated, @Tartegogo listed this one on his first post.. Had @dscrtsldnbi bothered to check, he would have noticed this grid at the top of the Boy List - These are the young men's statistics and what the boy's do. It seems remarkably clear - and vastly easier and faster than finding out such information in Bangkok and most other places! As for the comment about cock sizes and the use of feet and inches. A cheap barb to expect a vastly different country culturally like Japan from adhering to western norms!

In all my dozens of visits to Tokyo I have never used King of College. There are a few sites offering guys which are very explicit in terms of what they will do and how much you will pay. I'll repost images from another thread to save checking (@Tartegogo does give both the sites I list in his first post). The six icons at the foot of each boy's description are - Gay, Straight, Bisexual He appears in porn movies If in black, he can top him If in black, he will botom for you He will drink alcohol if highlighted He smokes cigarettes I am told Tokyo Kids also mentioned above is still going strong - https://kids-jp.com/en/tk/ This also lists what the guy will do or not do but not in quite so much detail -

Just one more item on flight costs. For years I flew regularly BKK/Hong Kong on the daily Emirates A380. Biz class price was rarely more than an amazing 14,000 baht even during the high season. Checked the first 3 months of 2023 yesterday. The price for biz class is now over 21,000.

What I admire about @vinapu is that he is a glass half full guy. Always able to see the bright side and never has a bad day. Makes a change from the moaners (who sometimes include me!)

It can be fun, but it can also be extremely frustrating! I will try google maps but expect I'll still rely on my bilingual map. For example, one Tokyo sauna has this address - 2-30-19 Toshima-ku, Ikebukuro Ni-chome, Tokyo. Chances are that if there is a phone the guy who answers will not understand English. Your hotel concierge will probably be able to give detailed directions to get there, but once almost outside the sauna it may be up a floor and the signage may be in Japanese! Once you get the hang of it, a bilingual atlas becomes very easy to locate addresses as it has all the detail @Keithambrose mentions including the block numbers. Some taxi drivers won't even know these! I was once going to be late for a meeting and stupidly decided on getting a taxi. We got close - and then he started going around virtually in circles. I didn't know and he didn't that during each of those circles he passsed by the llittle office which was my destination. Cost a near fortune! It was after that I got my atlas.

There used to be a small area off Nana Soi 4 (Nana Plaza?) where there were three ladyboy bars. I was taken to one with lots of boys. I was amazed at how beautiful these boys were. They were basically twinks who would happily let you fondle them if you had bought them drinks. We did not take any off but were tempted. Rather surprisingly we thought, there seemed very little girlish about most of them. We wondered if there would be much difference between offing them compared to one of the twinks in, say, Classic Boys. I wondered, too, how many would become kathoey eventually.

That is how it is supposed to work. Years ago when I went to the fantastic Ubon Ratchathanee Candle Festival, I had heard about a gay sauna. No longer recall the name, only that it was on Soi 2 leading off a larger road. I assumed it would be easy beause that road only had sois on the side leading down to the river. Having walked quite a long way from my hotel, I found Soi 1. After a while I found Soi 3. Where was Soi 2? After dark there seemed to be no one else in that part of Ubon. I retraced my steps. Perhaps it was very small and I had missed it. No luck. In the heat and humidity I was about to give up when I noticed that Soi 2 was actually quite a way after Soi 3! So, Soi 1 followed by 3 followed by 2. The sauna was quite pleasantly laid out and soon was worth the trip!

The corruption may be higher or not as high, but is any democracy nowadays truly anything other than fragile?

I've gone through a few in my time. One has lasted much longer than others, though. Returning to the UK through Schipol in the early-1990s I decided to try the new Cool Water by Davidoff which was advertised virtually everywhere in the airport. Since then have used it most mornings. For evenings I have used Montblanc's Presence ever since friends gave me a bottle about a dozen years ago.

My flights between BKK and Doha in March as the first and last sectors of a round trip to the UK have been changed from A350s to A380s. Clearly a mark of increasing demand.

And the BiB perhaps?

I have no doubt that there are cheap package tours from India. But india is one of the prime target markets for the TAT and we are going to see lots more. Not all are cheap charlies by any means. Go into Central Chidlom and other major department stores and you see indian couples with several high-end boutique shopping bags. As for bars, to my understanding there are no similar bars in India. Being charitable it may just be that they do not know how to behave in a gay bar. But if that is the case, the mamasan should be pointing out the rules.

Given the huge amounts invested in real estate in Hong Kong and Singapore by wealthy Chinese, I suspect this change in the law is aimed primarily at that market.

For your list, the Taipei Gay Pride Parade in 2023 is on Saturday 28 October with a full weekend of parties around it.

Love those silly headlines. There was one in a newspaper in I believe Aberdeen Scotland as soon as news of the Titanic sinking had been announced. Despite the loss of more than 1,500 lives, the front page banner headline read "North-East Man Lost At Sea."

Very occasionally I take a double dose of antibiotics for a digestive condition. At Bumrungrad Hospital I was never given any suggestion about taking probiotics thereafter, When I moved to BNH, that was almost the first thing the doctor mentioned. A course of probiotics is essential, he said, after a course of antibiotics for gut treatment. Now I always take them.

Rees-Mogg is surely a mere caricature - a puppet with someone's hand stuck up his backside making him move and a record of 1950s BBC clipped English being played out of his mouth. A frightful man! If I recall correctly, his father was a much more intelligent and wiser man.

To that list you can add the Night Bazaar and a vast number of gay venues in Chiang Mai, sadly.

Great judgement. I always thought of Boeing as the finest aircraft company. I adored the 747 in its various versions and still miss it after hundreds of flights. But from what we now KNOW about the development of the 737 MAX, the basic premise that by not designing a new aircraft and instead yet again attempting to modify a 1960s airframe with engines too big for it, the short cuts taken virutally all aong the production line and then the introduction of the MCAS system without telling pilots about it - the company has to be viewed as far more than negligent. The bean counters knew precisely what they were doing as numberous whistle blowers eventually proved. Boeing has to pay up as criminals. But I suggest the ruling does not go far enough. The FAA thanks to its too cosy relationship conspired with Boeing and has to bear a fair degree of the blame and contribute to damages settlements. Perhaps the FAA was not part of this law suit. If not, then one has to be brought against it sooner than later IMHO. At least we now have the satisfaction of knowing that this rot in the aircraft industry and its regulators will most likely be rooted out. The skies will be safer as a result.

There is no need to rehash the story of how the grandson of the Red Bull founder, Vorayth Yoovidya, mowed down and killed a policeman while driving his Ferrari at something like 170 kph along Sukhumvit at 5:00 in the morning in 2012 with drugs and alcohol found in his system. This murderer has used his family's billions to stay ahead of the law for ten years, even though Interpol has allegedly been involved (a fact I have disputed as his name has never appeared on any Interpol list of many thousands of wanted criminals) and he has been spotted at various locations, including here in Thailand. Coming from the 2nd wealthiest family in the country, clearly no one in the government has any intention of upsetting the elite apple cart by having him found. Today's interesting fact is that this murderer's grandfather was a simple maker of pharmaceutical products that happened to include one energy drink named "Sprightly Red Bull". An Austrian businessman visiting Thailand tasted it and decided this was a product that could be marketed internationally. He took a share in the company and set about making it the world's best selling brand and himself a fortune estimated at US$25 billion. Red Bull is far more than a drink. It sponsors a vast number of major sports around the world, including ownership of the Red Bull Formula 1 racing team whose lead driver is the current World Champion. That businessman Dietrich Mateschitz died yesterday. According to sources he owned a 49% share in the company which manufactures and markets the drink. With the founder of the Thai company also passed on into pastures new, it is one of his 11 children who now controls his various companies. Overall charge is in the hands of Saipin Yoovidya, the eldest son of the founder's first wife. Vorayuth is his nephew, his father being the next younger brother from the same mother in the family hierarchy. I suppose the question now is: what becomes of Mateschitz's 49% shareholding? Presumably he has bequeathed them to friends/family/colleagues. But do we know if there was any agreement between the two families that on his death some or all would revert back to the Yoovidya family? I guess time will tell. Time will also tell is the murderer is ever going to get his hands on even part of the company. It is known his family is protecting him by all lmeans possible. But such familial agreements do not always result in harmony. One prominent example is the man known as the former Godfather and Gambling King of Macao, Stanley Ho. Polygamy was legal in Hong Kong until 1971 (a result of an ancient Qing Dynasty ruling) and Ho had 17 known children from four wives, two of whom had legal marriages, the other two were after the repeal of the Polygamy Act. After his health deteriorated in 2009, lawsuits aplenty flowed from the wives and the children. The family squabbles over his fortune of many billions of US$s were described in one news outlet as "Byzantine". I know one lawyer who made a fortune by representing Ho who had counter sued some of them. So only time will tell not only if the murderer is ever brought to justice but if he is ever allowed to rule part of the fmaily empire. https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/63100448 https://asia.ub-speeda.com/en/thailands-top-five-family-owned-businesses-future-beyond-decades-thailand/

Some time ago I did a day trip to Koh Phangan. Even in the daytime the beaches were nothing special and certainly not gay. I'll put in another plug for the beaches at Khao Lak about 80 kms north of Phuket airport. Don't expect much gay life, if any, but it's a great quiet location to bring a young gay friend. Totally wiped out in the 2004 tsunami, Khao Lak is now a string of hotels set mercifully apart from each other along the most stunning beach. We spent a great 5 days there.

I sometimes use the word boys in posts and must start changing that habit for I do refer to young men. As for posting nude photos, I for one cannot find any reason why this should interest or excite anyone. But then I totally avoid social media. As I recently wrote, to me it should be renamed "unsocial media." Be careful. 16 years is certainy not the universal age of consent. And don't trust what anyone says or anyone posts. Can you ever be certain it is not a troll or someone out to do harm? I still get the occasional spam email allegedly from friends. How do you know that friend on facebook or whatever is really your friend and not someone posting as your friend?

Fascinating post! I agree with @macaroni21 that it is less to do with Asian religions as it is to the influence -the negative influence - of western religions. The fact is that most countries in Asia had a remarkable tolerance towards sex and sexuality compared to the west. I have referred before to the book by Dominique Fernandez A Hidden Love: Art and Homosexuality. In the section dealing with Asia he makes it clear - as do other writers - that homosexuality was far from uncommon amongst the Chinese Emperors. He maintains that China had "a glorious erotic culture, largely but by no means exclusively heterosexual." Some readers will have heard of the Long Yang clubs where gay men can meet and mingle. I remember attending one meeting in Bangkok in the mid-1990s which was held in an apartment on Soi Sribumphen not far from the Malaysia Hotel. Long Yang was a courtier in the 4th century BC allegedly with special skills that endeared him to the Emperor. Another Emperor Wu Ti around 100 BC surrounded himself with boys as well as women as his concubines and is even known to have engaged in occasional menages a trois with two of his favourite boys. Best known perhaps is the tale of the Han Dynasty Emperor Ai Ti a century later who had numerous male lovers. Sharing his counch with his favourite Dong Xian, the young man fell asleep across the Emperor's sleeve. Rather than awaken him, the Emperor merely took his sword and cut off the sleeve. Even today, "cut sleeve" (黄九郎) is a commonly used euphemism for homosexual love. As late as the 18th century, the book Passions of the Cut Sleeve recounts 50 of the most famous cases of male love throughout Chinese history. From China, a bonze took this love and caring for younger boys to his native Japan around 800CE where it soon became the custom. During the three great dynasties in Korean history, homosexuality was never far from the ruling Courts. King Hyegong kept a group of elite warriors known for their homoeroticism and femininity called the "Flower Boys". When King Gongmin's wife died, he created a new Ministry whose sole duty was to roam the Kingdom and seek out beautiful young men to serve at Court. His sexual partners were called "little brother attendants." Even in South East Asia where Islam had taken hold after many centuries of Hinduism, sex was still regarded as a healthier outlet than it seems to be today, unless it is now almost exlcusively for procreation. Yet I found it interesting in Iran 4 years ago that my guide, a tall, good looking 40ish man, had a regular hooker in every town we visited. If there was one Asian influence that helped reduce the degree of homosexuality it was Confucianism with its strong emphasis on family. The main driving force historically, though, was surely the European colonial powers. Not the traders. It was the missionaries who followed closely in their wake who then caused havoc with societal norms up till then. In China the Taiping Rebellion effectvely became a civil war between about 1850 to 64. Fed with the all the bs in the religious pamphlets being spread by the missionaires, Hong Xiuquan believed he was the brother of Jesus Christ and amassed a large number of followers. The civil war which erupted killed 20 million, a huge massacre and one of the bloodiest in history, before it was finally put down. In Japan, it was the American missionaries who followed Commander Perry who forced the shoguns out and Japan to open up. But only to open up to western religious ideals at the expense of many centuries-old Japanese customs. It is thanks to the American influence after WWII that Japanese pornography to this day uses pixillation. Finally in Thailand. In the 1880s, one American visiter was so shocked by the nudity of the population that he remarked, "Not until Thailand is clothed need she expect a place among the respectable, civilized nations." Even though Thailand is one of the few nations never to have been colonised, the forces of democracy in the 1930s saw to it that attitudes gradually changed to fall much more in line with western thinking. The west has a great deal to answer for!