Gaybutton

I'm wondering if the volcano in Iceland has grounded any of you in Thailand. As far as I know, this is the first time an "Act of God" has created this kind of circumstance and so far the reports are that no end to the volcanic eruption is in sight. If you're struck in Thailand, and your visa is about to expire, have any of you been to Immigration? If yes, what are you being told? If you are eligible for an extension, are they making you pay for it? What happens if your extension runs out, but you're still stuck due to flight cancellations? Will Immigration continue granting extensions until flights are running again? Are they making you leave Thailand despite the volcano and saying you'll have to go to another country? On the other hand, many farang who live in Thailand went to other countries to escape Songkran and are due to return to Thailand within the next several days. Are any of you stuck somewhere and find yourself unable to return to Thailand? What problems are you encountering? What's the story?

Red-Shirts, Yellow-Shirts, Pink-Shirts, Blue-shirts - and now "No Color-Shirts." __________ 'No colours' rally against red shirts at army base Published: 17/04/2010 Bangkok Post Thousands of protesters opposed to dissolving parliament have converged on the 11th Infantry Regiment base in a show of moral support for the government and the military. And now they vow to gather at Victory Monument to support the government every day. Friday's rally opposed the demands of the red shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship which has repeatedly called on the Abhisit government to dissolve the lower house. The protesters also called for severe legal action to be taken against the red shirt rally at Ratchaprasong intersection to return peace and normalcy to the capital. 'No colours' rally against red shirts at army base __________ 'No colour' group holds out new hope for civil society 17/04/2010 Bangkok Post The political impasse presents an opportunity for civil society and business groups to play a larger role in bringing Thailand out of crisis. While civil society groups have existed in Thailand for decades, they were only formalised under the 1997 constitution. These groups provide a channel for people to communicate with the government. Unfortunately, many of them have been weakened and exploited by political influence. This has created a lost opportunity for Thais, especially those in urban areas like Bangkok. 'No colour' group holds out new hope for civil society

You always take excellent Songkran photos. Do you have any for us this year?

An embarrassing fiasco for govt By THE NATION Published on April 17, 2010 Arisman Pongruangrong and other red-shirt leaders on a wanted list could not be apprehended when they were in full public view in the middle of the city, so what convinced Thai police that they could catch them by storming a hotel that once belonged to Thaksin Shinawatra? From the embarrassing shambles left in their wake, not only did the police think they could do so - they must have presumed they could do it with one eye closed. When overweight Arisman, who must also be afraid of heights, staged a clumsy cable-descending stunt in front of local and international media from the SC Park Hotel's third-floor balcony to safety, the humiliation of Thailand's highly questionable police force was complete. Not to mention that two senior officers were taken by the red mob from the hotel to the Rajprasong rally site to "guarantee" the escapees' safe return. How come what was supposed to be a pre-dawn sting operation ended with Arisman staging the escape just before 10am and mobs accompanying all the police targets back to Rajprasong at noon? Everything was so fishy that Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, who around 9am had proudly announced that Arisman and at least a couple of others were now in police custody, lost his cool and virtually everyone on the government side lost patience with his excuses. A probe into what went wrong was pledged, but the damage had been done and half the world was already laughing. An embarrassing fiasco for govt SC Park Hotel back in the headlines By THE NATION Published on April 17, 2010 The SC Park Hotel on Praditmanutham Road became a scene of high drama yesterday morning. Hundreds of policemen entered the hotel to arrest six red-shirt leaders - Arisman Pongruangrong, Suporn Atthawong, Payap Panket, Sangiem Samranlak, Wanchana Kerddee and Yoswarit Chuklom, aka Jeng Dokchik. However, two of the six escaped by lowering themselves from the third floor via electrical cabling. The other four were apprehended, but were almost immediately released when red-shirt demonstrators descended on the area. SC Park Hotel back in the headlines

You can safely go again. That manager is no longer with Poseidon. He left five months ago. Kim manages Poseidon herself now. The other restaurant you referred to is called L'Olivier. They are closed until after Songkran. The Ritz and Aquarius, both in Jomtien Complex, are also closed until after Songkran. By the way, if anyone is going to go to Poseidon (or anywhere in the Jomtien Beach area) between now and the end of Songkran, I suggest going by car, riding up front with the driver if you go by baht bus, or call Poseidon and ask for their courtesy car. If not, unless you are going for a late dinner you will get soaked on the way and probably on the way back too. I've seen groups still splashing people between Pattaya Tai and Jomtien beach as late as 9:00pm.

That's what to do, then. If you're having problems with the speed, the thing to do is start the download when you're ready to go to sleep. Then, when you wake up, your download ought to be there.

I would have thought you might at least come up with a good intelligent argument and analogy. My friend, that one definitely ain't it . . . Try again.

Then I fail to see the point of trying to pay one's way out of it at all. What it amounted to is 10,000 baht per person was lost to this "fixer" and they still wound up having to take their chances. For all practical purposes the "fixer" profited 100,000 baht for essentially guaranteeing nothing.

There is a good review, with photos, in this week's PATTAYA MAIL: Pattaya Mail - Dining Out & Entertainment

Several people I've spoken to, even with different cable companies, lost the Bloomberg channel this week and also were upset. I suppose if enough people call and complain they might restore it, but I think the most likely reason they would have dropped it would if they started having to pay a lot more for it.

I'm glad it worked out. Did you see anyone get the red ball? I'm curious as to how they responded. Did they take it in stride? Did they get upset? What did you see?

I'm not sure that is really the issue here. I'm seeing this as an issue of causing upset for your farang friend. I cannot argue that taking a working boy off from a bar, Gay Romeo, or whatever would be a wrong thing to do and wouldn't be fair game, but it still would be something I would not choose to do if I know that it will cause a friend to be upset. I keep bringing out the same point - with the number of boys available, why would I want to take out the one boy I know will cause a friend to be upset with me? That is something I would never do and my reason is out of respect for a friend's wishes. Whether the boy would generally be considered his boyfriend is irrelevant to me. It would upset my friend and cause problems with our friendship, so my choice would be to abide by my friend's wishes and find a different boy even if taking out that particular boy would be totally justifiable.

Comments here and there have popped up often on various threads, but I don't recall a thread devoted exclusively to mama-sans. So, I'm starting one. I think regular readers of this board are already well aware of my personal opinion of the mama-sans. In general, I do not particularly care for them, to put it mildly. I'd like to know your opinions of mama-sans in the gay go-go bars (I never see any in the beer bars). Other than starting this thread, I'll keep out of it (for once). As I said, my opinion is already well known, but I'd like to know what the rest of you have to say about the mama-sans.

He's also one of these fine people who wants to dictate how everyone else should live, and he would be the first one to force them if he could.

Didn't you read my post above? I suggested it there, although I didn't go into the detail you did in your post.

(AP) Mike Huckabee, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, says the effort to allow gays and lesbians to marry is comparable to legalizing incest, polygamy and drug use. Huckabee also told college journalists last week that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt. "Children are not puppies," he said. Huckabee visited The College of New Jersey in Ewing, N.J., last Wednesday to speak to the Student Government Association. He also was interviewed by a campus news magazine, The Perspective, which published an article on Friday. Huckabee told the interviewer that not every group's interests deserve to be accommodated, if their lifestyle is outside of what he called "the ideal." "That would be like saying, well there's there are a lot of people who like to use drugs so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, should we accommodate them?" he said, according to a transcript of the interview. Huckabee: Gay Marriage Akin to Incest, Polygamy

I draw the line at you twisting words to come up with something absolutely ridiculous. If you can't figure out the difference between taking a random boy off from a bar and a boy you know to be your friend's boyfriend, then you have my sympathy. Are you saying that if you were in a bar, saw a boy working there who you know to be a boy a friend of yours has been seeing and cares about, and that friend would be upset if he knew you took that boy off, you would go ahead and take him off anyhow? If you would really do something like that, I'm glad you and I are not friends.

Splashing activities are escalating as predicted, primarily along Beach Road in the city and along Thappraya Road, toward Jomtien Beach, especially once you reach the Thepprasit Road intersection. From there on, it's bumper-to-bumper traffic with plenty of pickup trucks filled with water barrels and teens splashing everyone in sight. Other than that, all I have seen anywhere else are small groups of young children who are for the most part benign. They're lucky to be able to hurl water more than 3 or 4 feet, so they really are not much of a factor. However, for the rest of the week you might as well expect to be splashed sooner or later, so it is a good idea to make sure you protect your valuables and start asking baht bus drivers to let you sit up front with them. Of course, with the temperatures and humidity as high as they are now, a little water splashing might well be a welcome relief.

I asked if they would be willing to provide transportation to customers who don't want to get soaked going to and from dinner. They said they will send a courtesy car upon request provided you are within a reasonable distance (to be determined upon request for the car.) The courtesy car is also available for breakfast during Songkran.

If you are a UBC subscriber, they send you a booklet each month with their entire listings - in English. For shows such as American Idol, you can also download them within hours of the broadcast from eztv.

I think it depends on what they both want. I don't think whether the farang boyfriend supports him has anything to do with it. I'm not so sure the boy is even the issue. It's the friend of the farang. As I said, if it were me and the boyfriend was a working boy, I don't think it would matter much to me when he is going with other farang solely for the purpose of earning his living and using them as nothing more than a customer. For me, it would be a totally different thing if a friend of mine wanted to be one of those farang customers. I would never do that to a friend and I wouldn't stand for a friend doing that to me. Even if I said it was ok, I would still resent the fact that my farang friend even asked. From that moment on, the relationship I have with my farang friend would be forever changed. It was one thing when my farang friend, my boyfriend, and I would be together doing different things. It would be quite another if I now knew my farang friend wants to have sex with my boyfriend and actually asked. After that, whenever we are together I would know what my farang friend wanted to do and probably still wants to do. Maybe that wouldn't bother you, but it would certainly bother me, and it would bother me to the point that I would immediately end the friendship with my farang friend. I would consider that to be a betrayal. I could never see my farang friend the same way again. If that same farang friend had a boyfriend of his own I would never dream of attempting to have sex with that boy, especially in light of the fact that so many other boys are available. My friend saw him first. That's my misfortune. I would have to console myself with my choice from among the hundreds of others. If I want to have sex with a boy, it would never be the boy a friend thinks of as his boyfriend. You said it depends entirely on what the boy wants. If sex with one of my friends is what he wants, then that's one boy who would be out my door.

Put on your glasses. I see mostly farang. Yes, it's an assumption on my part that they're drunk, but I've driven by that area a million times and I always see them drinking starting early in the morning even when it is not Songkran. They're shooting water at people from bars. What do you think they're doing there, having a cup of coffee? I could be wrong about my assumption, but probably not, especially when it reached a point that people complained to the police, enough so that the police actually pursued the complaints. Other than when that idiot (a farang) was arrested for putting acid in his squirt gun and injuring a young boy a few years ago, this is the only time I can recall the police going after the water shooters. I blame the bars as much as the farang doing the shooting. You can see in the pictures that water barrels had been set up. I would think the bar girls did that, not the farang. I also believe the farang were probably encouraged by the bar girls. Either way, how would you like to have been an unsuspecting farang on a baht bus finding himself, his camera, mobile phone, passport, and God-knows-what-else soaked by some morons at a bar when those kinds of water squirting incidents were not supposed to start yet? I think I've made it clear that I love Songkran and all that goes with it, but if I had been a victim of that soaking on that particular day, I too would have been furious. I hope if those people had any of their valuables destroyed, the police made those responsible pay for the damage. I also think that everybody knows to expect the water works to escalate starting now, so now is the time to start protecting your valuables. Between now and the end of the day on the 19th, you're considered fair game.

It's difficult for me to understand why anyone would ask such a question. First, it implies the boyfriend would even be willing to date a friend of yours. If I had a boyfriend willing to do that, someone who I care about and supposedly cares about me, someone with whom I have been together with on a long-them basis, then I would drop the boyfriend along with the friend. They can have each other. With all the boys readily available here, a so-called friend has to ask if he can date your boyfriend? He can't find a different boy? He doesn't mind even the possibility of imposing like that? What kind of a friend is that? It brings to mind that phrase, "With friends like that, who needs enemies?" If you really have been asked that question, and the question was asked seriously, I would make it crystal clear that is totally unacceptable. I would ask the boyfriend, even if he is a working boy, not to let that happen. I would also at best cool the friendship, but more likely drop that person as a friend. It just wouldn't be the same anymore. If the boyfriend is a working boy, it's one thing if you know he is going off with people you've never heard of and probably never will because that's how he makes his living. It's quite another to return to Thailand to hear your farang friend say, "I had a wonderful time with your boyfriend. And wow, is he ever great in bed!" For me, that definitely wouldn't work. I had kind of a bizarre thing happen to me a few months ago. A close friend of mine had hired a gay boy to be his houseboy. As far as I know, that was the extent of their relationship. I really had no interest in interfering with their relationship no matter what the circumstances happened to be, but it was the boy himself who approached me. I brought it to the attention of my friend who assured me that the boy is nothing to him beyond hired help and he would have no problem about it. Still, despite that, I felt very uncomfortable about it. I never did do anything with that particular boy. As I said, there are so many here that I had no need. Also, I felt that even though my friend said he has no problem about it, and I believe that, I still felt that if I pursued it, it would cause some sort of psychological diminishment of the relationship I have with my friend. I would have felt awkward about it, so I left it alone. I do feel that I did the right thing by letting my friend know instead of simply tacitly telling the boy I would rather not and leaving it at that. That boy and my friend are no longer together even in their employer-employee relationship. The boy has contacted me since then. I still felt awkward and did not pursue it. I also did let my friend know the boy is still trying. I have had "should I tell my friend" discussions with others. No matter what the circumstances, if something is going on I would want to know. I would not appreciate my friends doing my thinking for me and avoid telling me what they know. I also would not do that to others. And I don't ever want to be caught up in a "why didn't you tell me" situation.

Apparently, in Pattaya so far most of the water splashing has been confined to a small area along Beach Road. PATTAYA ONE is reporting that tourists on baht buses who did not expect any of this just yet were quite angry and went to the police. The police were out there confiscating the water guns. You can view the story and a few photos on PATTAYA ONE. And who do you see in the photos busy shooting water at people? You guessed it . . . mostly drunken farang. Pattaya Songkran-related water fighting begins

I guess it's time to check back. I just tried it and it worked with no problem.