PeterRS

I wonder if this might have any effect on the parliamentary attempts to legalise same sex marriage in Vietnam? Unlikely I expect, but we shall see. In 2014 parliament passed a law removing the ban on same sex marriage. SInce then, little progress has been made, although a group of citizens has set up a co-ordinating body to press for legality by winning hearts and minds. Polls held in 2012, 2013 and 2015/16 showed an increasing acceptance of the idea of gay marriage. Those voting 'for' in 2015/16 had risen to 45% and opposition dropped to 25%. During VietPride in 2020 it had this bus with "I Do" on the side touring the country.

@spokedark is far from alone. I don't quite know why it is but there is quite a number of guys in Thailand - and some other parts of Asia - who seek much older guys as partners. The obvious response from cynics will be - cash! But that is very often not the case. It seems to me that many of these young guys come from broken homes and had sad home upbringings. There is a very definite and strong desire for love from a father figure. I have certainly seen this in Thailand, in Japan, in Hong Kong and in Singapore. While those of us from the west might have found it highly disagreeable to have sex with a much older man, many Asians look on sex in a very different light.

I have lived in Bangkok for 20 years but spent the previous 22 years living mostly in Hong Kong and partly Tokyo. After moving here I continued running a small company in Hong Kong until 2017. That meant commuting virtually every month for the first decade and then at longer intervals when work started to tail off. I still return 2 or 3 times a year. I have never been to Hutong but it has a very good reputation, although I have seen comments about a degree of racism. It seems to get very full at the weekends and the doormen then pick and choose who they will allow to enter. How true this is I have no idea. As you are still young and probably in decent - if not better - physical shape, I suspect you'd have zero problem. I have not been to an HKG sauna for about 5 years and it was usually the tiny CE which was quite close to my office. Generally it caters mostly to older westerners wanting to meet younger Chinese, although on my last visit I met a couple of extremely handsome, tall and slim Chinese from Shanghai who had come on long week-end shopping trips. A sauna and clubs were part of their schedule.

I am the same. Although I was there in November for 16 days I'll be back next month for 10 days. The Pride Parade is in my diary and I will do my damndest to get there again. The date is Saturday 28 October but the parties go on all weekend. The saunas and hot springs will be totally packed!

Isn't this also an essential element to a successful encounter? Picking two boys who do not know each other often just does not work. Thais tend to be shy in front of other Thais unless they know them well. Let all meet up at Foodland and you are guaranteed a 7-star Michelin star events LOL.

That first video showing the aircraft banking steeply to the left is remarkably similar to another turbo prop crash in Taipei 7 years ago. This was the second deadly crash by turbo props run by Trans Asia Airways. Three years earlier it had started international services to Bangkok and Chiang Mai as V Air using I believe an A 320. I should know as I took that flight several times. The accident enquiry found that shortly after take off there was an emergency warning in the cockpit indicating that one of the engines was flaming out. In such a circumstance the engine should be shut down and the propeller blades automatically go into a position that will not affect the speed of the aircraft. The captain decided to turn around and return to Songshan airport (the one on the west side of Taipei). He orders the co-pilot to shut down the No. 1 engine - the one under the right wing. The aircraft quickly loses speed and stall warnings sound in the cockpit. The co-pilot tells the captain that there is now a flame out on both engines and asks how this is possible. Realising that he has shut down the wrong engine, the captain orders the left engine to be restarted. The plane banks steeply to the left and crashes. Even if the captain had ordered the right engine restarted, it is unlikely sufficient power would have resulted to keep the aircraft in the air as it was far too low to the ground. Many errors on behalf of Trans Asia maintenance, the captain's preflight inspection and faulty coordination between the pilots were discovered. Soon Trans Asia ceased all operations.

One disaster that was is the crash of the Yeti Air turbo prop about to land at Pokhara in Nepal on Sunday. The airport was quite new but I cannot believe that was a major contribution to the crash. We'll find out in due course. I have flown that route twice - in November 1980 and November 2009. Kathmandhu Domestic ariport must be the most inefficient and disgusting in the world. Both flights were due to take off around 1:00 pm. The first did, but it was cloudy all the way. That struck me as odd because Nepalese Airlines have to fly by visiual flight rules. If all the pilots saw was cloud, how did they make it safely to Pokhara? The 2009 flight almost never took off. The terminal smelled of urine, all flights were delayed and all monitors were broken. Flights were announced verbally by a man with a voice few could hear. My flight was delayed and delayed to the point where we were informed if the incoming plane did not arrive by round 4:30 pm, we would not be able to take off as it would be too dark to land at Pokhara. Eventually just before 4:30 we were asked to board. We were in the air about 15 minutes later. This time it was a bright sunny late afternoon and I was staggered at how close the aircraft flew to the mountains on the right. We landed with some light still guiding the pilot down. I asume the pilot of my 1980 flight had a good idea how close he was to those mountains. Pokhara when I first visited was a small village with one main pot-holed road lined with guest houses. But getting up at 5:00 am for the hour long trek up the hill to watch dawn break over the Himalayas resulted in one of the greatest sights I have seen anywhere. As dawn broke, the clouds I assumed I had seen in the sky were in fact mountain peaks. The Annapurna range is literally just across a valley and boasts one peak over 8,000 meters, 13 over 7,000 meters and 16 over 6,000 meters. I think that experience was as close as I have ever come to a religious experience. When I returned, Pokhara had become a city of over half a million and packed with tourists. The hour's morning trek was just a 7 minute car ride to the look-out point at Sarangot. This had well over 100 young Japanese and Koreans waiting for dawn to break. Unfortunately, trailing clouds from a cyclone over the Bay of Bengal meant the view was not as crystal clear as it had been 29 years earlier. But still utterly awesome.

I am sure JFK is not the only airport with near misses on the ground. But I was once on an Air France 747 from Paris which had to abort its landing because another aircraft had suddenly encroached on the designated arrival runway. Perhaps the best-known incident was about 11 years ago when an Air France A380 hit a smaller Delta Connection aircraft's tail and spun it around. How fire was avoided - thank the Lord!

Best advice so far.

As the doctor states at the start of that video, the right decision would have been for all countries in the world to treat all visitors to all countries equally! The implication being that there is no unanimous agreement about Chinese tourism while the pandemic is out of control in that country. I also note his comments are littered with "maybe", "could be" "I think . . ." "I expect . . ." That sure gives listeners a great deal of confidence!

Just what gay tourists are likely to import 🤣

With the UK Masters having finished last night with Judd Trump taking the title won last year by Zhao Xin-tong. it seems the Snooker Authorities' enquiries about match fixing are close to conclusion. Hopefully some of those under suspicion will be exonerated and permitted back on the tour. The fact that all ten players suspended are Chinese is a big problem for the authorities. China is by far the largest new market for snooker and more and more tournaments are being played there. A few months ago the Hong Kong tournament was played before an audience of 8,000 in the Hong Kong Coliseum, the first time any tournament had been played before spectators numbering more than around 3,000. China is seen to be the future of the game, especially with more and more young players winning places on the world tour. The fact that all ten under investigation are Chinese not only threatens the immediate future of the sport surely casts some doubt on the accusations. There have been British players suspended in previous years, but only two. I have already mentioned the possibility of triad influence. But I find it difficult to understand why top-ten players like Zhou and the younger Yan Bing-tao who have both won several major tournaments would throw away what were about to become stellar careers. Zhou in particular has had no dream other than playing professiojnal snooker since he was a small kid. His father even bought him a full-size snooker table when it became obvious that this was the career he wanted. The 12-year ban handed out to Stephen Lee for match fixing in 2008 and 2009 must surely have been a major deterrent to future players. Even one of the 'greats' John Higgins had to serve a much shorter ban for similar reasons. The Thai No. 1 Thepchaya Un-Nooh was investigated in 2012 but no charges wre brought. One former 'great' Willei Thorne has stated that corruption through match-fixing is endemic in the game. Apparently virtually all players have been approached. Thailand's frist player to reach the top ranks 30 years ago James Wattana even received death threats if he did not fix a match. It does seem that even though the authorities have made major efforts to stamp out match fixing, there is little they can do when bets can be taken on any number of possibilities during a match. Unless their evidence against some of the Chinese players is watertight, I still hope to see many of them exonerated.

Good luck in trying to get that accepted by the airline which flies you into Thailand! The problem for airlines is that if the passenger fails to provide proof of exit within 30 days, it is the airline which is fined a considerable sum and is also responsible for flying the passenger back to his point of departure on the next flight out. In other words, the passenger is not permitted entry to Thailand. I cannot believe any airline employee anywhere in the world checking passengers in for Thailand flights will have the slightest clue about confirmed bus or train bookings.

I have a one year visa but my passport is almost full and I had to point it out to the CX employee as he could not locate it!

I just wrote in another forum, I was stopped at Cathay Pacific check-in at HKG three days ago and asked to show either my visa or an outbound ticket. And I have flown the BKK/HKG/BKK sectors well over 200 times.

You could have fooled me! 😉 Everyone has their own style of posting and readers just have to get used to that. But in a post like the one above and others in this thread, perhaps @12is12 might enlighten us why 'M' and 'acdmc' have letters missing when 'profession' is spelled in full. It appears merely to be some form of artificial affectation.

Hopefully you are not mistaken, but I have serious doubts. I have lost track of the number of empty taxis driving past when people try to flag them down. Drivers do not want to get bogged down in traffic, even though the meter still runs, and they much prefer long distances. If they see shopping bags, it seems they just assume you only want to go 2 or 3 kms and will not stop. I see this regularly after I have been to a supermarket very near my condo. I often have to wait for the 5th or 6th empty taxi before it stops. And no, the ones which sailed by did not have "Busy" on their signs - the relatively new indication that they are on they way to pick someone up. The other much more understandable problem is end of shifts. If the driver does not own his cab, he has to deliver it back at a certain time so that another driver can take his place. Clearly he does not want to go to Don Mueang if the next driver is waiting by Saphan Thaksin! But surely the Transport Dept. could give each owner a sign to place over the meter stating "End of Shift" or some such wording. But that's far too obvious for Thailand, clearly!

What many people fail to understand that for many years contracting HIV was a death sentence. Get it from sex, blood transfusions or another exchange of bodily fluids and AIDS was bound to follow, then an extremely unpleasant long, lingering death. I had one friend who was so utterly and passionately devoted to his younger South American lover, after his death from AIDS in 1991 he simply could not consider another relationship. He himself did not pass away until 2017.

It's been reported more than a few times in this Board in recent years that younger Thais increasingly favour BB sex. It seems to be common in the Thai-for-Thai saunas dotted around the outskirts of Bangkok. Given the reduced amount of sex education in schools, in particular relating to HIV and how to avoid catching it, it is sadly not surprising.

Love to see some of those young snooker players in tight short pants - preferably white so you can see the bulge. But there would have to be an age limit. Who would want to see Ronnie O'Sullivan or John Higgins other than covered head to toe in black?

i arrived back last night on a Cathay Pacific flight. No checks in HKG other than that I had a visa, no checks at BKK. Only requirement was the wearing of masks in flight except at meal time. Not sure why the visa was an issue at check-in as I have an annual visa and a flight out on 10 February. But the CX staffer would not check me in until he saw the visa in my passport!

I'll make another bet. Anutin's measures will be revised sooner rather than later!

I happen to be a fan of snooker and am glued to the tv when the main tournaments are being played. One feature of recent years has been the arrival of many young Chinese players. Two in particular have won major events. First was 22 year-old Yang Bing-tao who won the 2021 Masters title. Even more talented is 25 year-old Zhao Xin-tong from X'ian who won the 2021 UK and German Masters titles. His qualities as a player have been praised extremely highly by such greats as Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry. Most of these Chinese players moved to Sheffield in England when they were much younger where there are excellent facillities for their development. Now a huge cloud hangs over not just these two players but 8 others ranging in age from 19 to 35. All have been banned by the snooker authorities pending the outcome of investigations for match fixing. Fixing the outcome of matches is not confined to Chinese players. In 2013 the British player Stephen Lee was banned for 10 years. The integrity unit of the World Professional Billiard and Snooker Association monitors the betting industry very closely. It receives alerts when unusual betting activity is discovered. The detail of the bans presently imposed have not been made public. Given the massive increase in interest of the sport in China in particular, I can only assume that it came as a result of bets made in Asia. Given that most of these young Chinese are a result of the country's one-child policy, I can see the possibility of triad activity here. These gangsters would be unlikely to go after the players since they are based in England. But I can see them going after their families if the sons did not go along with their illegal activities. But that's a pure guess. We have to wait a few more weeks before the details are made public. Should illegal match fixing be proved, it will be good for the sport. It will also be sad to see so much talent banned for many years when they should be at their peak. Zhao Xin-tong, the world No. 9, is especially cute (!) and I will miss his participation on the international snooker tour! https://www.bbc.com/sport/snooker/64174244

Will we now see a resurgence of the Russian mafia which used to control part of Pattaya's life as it did more openly in Phuket? And will Chinese triad activity follow as it has done very effectively in Sihanoukville in Cambodia?

I don't think that is quite accurate. China has been battling covid ever since it first appeared in Wuhan more than 3 years ago. Led by Xi Jinping's mad policy it assumed it could triumph over an invisible virus. Three years of massive city lockdowns and huge disruption to its once thriving economy. Now instead of being sensible about it, it has just unlocked the stable door and thrown away the key. No doubt this has something to do with Chinese New Year in a couple of weeks and the massive unrest that he would have faced had he forced the population to abandon the lunar New Year family gatherings for yet another year. For China this is not a new battle. It is the continuation of a huge failure which threatens to lead to an even bigger failure, one that will see covid spread massively within China. Some of those infected are now spreading to other parts of the world and/or putting the world's healthcare facilities at considerable risk. Classic buck passing. The allied issue arising from this is: can Xi hang on to power? The lockdown policy was his. The deaths that are now following are on him. The leadership in Beijing is not a unified body. It is rife with factions as we recently saw at the National People's Congress a couple of months ago. Will he be dethroned? We shall see.