numerito

Yes, a ransom ware attack. The site was restored to a previous version and all is well. Thanks for your patience. 

Most browsers have a 'zoom' feature hidden somewhere in their menus.  

Same on  Win 10.

I work on a Mac desktop. Pressing the control and then += key easily increases the size,  several times if necessary.

tasso has valid points.
Like I said in a previous post, visiting is quite different from living here. Every week, I look at my work and social schedule and I plan my customary 2-3 dates accordingly. I am thus able to plan in advance, and give the guys some notice. 
There is another peculiarity about the escort market in Prague: the boys rely mainly on visitors, because local clients are rare (the Czechs hire very, very little according to what my boys tell me). That is why they go to Zurich or Germany. In addition to my pleasant disposition, my bed talents , and my money (how could I forget that?   ), the fact that I am local is what makes me such a rare pearl to the boys. I like my regulars and, even if I throw new cards into the lot from time to time, I am very loyal to them. Sort of a steady income which they appreciate.  I just came back from a terrific, fantastic, awesome meeting with one of them (sorry, no kiss and tell, because he no longer advertises) which, according to my anally --pun intended-- meticulous records, was our 35th time together in a year and a half. Yes, I am a very happy camper, I am.

In Mexico City airport it's impossible - shrine of Guadelupe is too close to the airport

OR lotsa cash. ☺️

poison ivy mixed with Hagen Dazs vanilla ice cream and grinded dried frogs tongue it well known  cure for male baldness working 11 times out of 10 as found by researches from Maseru's Lesotho Medical College and Deli

OMG! I had forgotten about that movie. I watched it several times, always hoping that Christopher Atkins would finally strip totally naked!

Just in case, I am shipping my emergency stuck.

Viagra is available everywhere, don't worry 🍆

For many flying between Europe and Bangkok increasingly a plane change in Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi or now even Oman is necessary. Even though many are keen only to get to their final destination, the possibity for short stopovers is increasingly possible, the more so when some of the wonders of the world are on your doorstep. Some time ago, I wrote a series of articles on an amazing two weeks in Iran, an extraordinariy beautiful country with lovely people. While I would not consider that now in the present political climate, there is another short stopover to one of the unique sights of our world that amazed me. I took the One World airline Royal Jordanian from Bangkok to Amman where I had booked a 3-day stopover specifically for this fabulous site.
Petra, "The Rose Red City Half as Old as Time", is one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. Although Petra appears in the Old Testament, the city we know today was founded by the Nabateans, nomads, highly skilled stone masons and whose mastery of water resources enabled the city to thrive as one of the old Silk Roads. By the 1st century AD it was a thriving city, but soon integrated into the Roman Empire. As trade routes from Asia moved more seawards, the city all but vanished into obscurity. The lost city was eventually rediscovered by a Swiss disguised as an Arab trader in 1812. Pre-covd it was hosting as many as 1 million visitors a year.
Amman to Petra is about 230 kms. My driver/guide was waiting at the airport and pointed out sights on the way, including an old Crusader castle which we visited. I had chosen to stay at a hotel right by the entrance to the site. I was aware that to get there you have to descend around 2 kms. I was much more worried about the climb back up when after a full day sighseeing I knew I would be exhausted.
To access the city itself you have to enter the Siq, a split in the rock no more than 3 meters wide

You then wander down for 1 .2 km into this cleft with the rock on each side growing larger and larger


Eventually you come to the extraordinary carving of the Elephant Rock

At one point my guide played a trick on me. He asked me to turn and look at a point near the top of a rock. It was merely a ruse, for when I turned back we we turned a short corner, this is what I saw

Within moments the full glory of The Treasury carved out of solid rock was before me.

This then is the real start of the journey. As you wander right, you pass a number of buildings, including the remains of a Roman amphitheatre

Then a host of caves which were the burial spots for prominent Nabataens 

Other examples of Roman architcture remain 

But it is the tombs of the Nabatean royalty that are most magnificent. This was that of the King
m
Others in the same area are almost as magnificent




Guards unobtrusively watch over the city during opening hours

Almost most magnificent of all are the colours embedded in the stone


After climbing all the way back to the hotel, never has a large glass of cold beer tasted so wonderful!
The following day, the guide took us past the Dead Sea (I decided not to take a dip) and then up to Mount Nibo, the mountain which Moses is alleged to have climbed to be nearer to his God as he was dying. Laid out before us in the mist were many well-known cities and landmarks.

My trip ended with a tour around some of the sights of Amman, including its still functioning Roman amphitheatre where concerts regularly take place. 

The three day trip was worth every Baht. I loved it. Next on my list for a Middle East stopover will be Oman which a friend who worked there most of his life tells me is stunningly beautiful. Besides, he told me, there are two sisters who make the most delicious chocolate in the world!

Another classic tale, probably apocryphal, is that the set for a Wagner opera was misrouted to Lebanon instead of Germany, because someone confused Bayreuth with Beirut...
 

I don't think we know eactly how many Palestinian fighters invaded Israel. What they did was brutality in the extreme and inexcusable. But there are several facts we have to be aware of. Almost 2,000 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed and 251 taken hostage. Reprisals were bound to follow, but the scale of those reprisals, considering some hostages still have not been released, is massively out of all proportion to the scale of the original attack, both in terms of the horrific number of deaths and the near destruction of most buildings in Gaza.
We have to remember that in 1993 there was a glimmer of hope when it seemed a two-state solution would emerge. The Gaza Strip had been handed over to the Palestinians after the creation of israel. Under international law, israel has no right to that land. That illeglly ended with the Six-Day war in 1967 when Israel took it over. The plan for a two-state soution remained in discussion but was doomed to failure after Israel's moderate Prime Minister and was hero, Yitzak Rabin, was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist. The stage was set for the eventual take over of the right wing in Iraeli pollitics.
It took until 2005 before Israel dismantled its settlements and left the Strip. Israel assumed leadership would be taken over by the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Two years later the more militant Hamas which had never accepted the state of Israel assumed power. Thereafter for years Natanyahu's governments propped up Hamas. He assumed that reducing the influence of the PLO would virtually end discussion on a two-state solution.
So what happened in October 2023 is entirely due to Netanyahu. He took his eye completely off the ball. In August 2023 his own security advisers were telling him that security had become weak and Israel had to so something to beef it up - and quickly.
In November 2024 the independent Civilian Commission of Inquiry into October 7, which was organized in July 2024 by survivors of the October 7 attack and the families of victims who were either killed or kidnapped, released a report placing broad blame on the Israeli government for effectively bolstering Hamas throughout Netanyahu’s tenure and leaving the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ill prepared for the assault. Although the report named Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Benny Gantz, the IDF, and intelligence agencies among those responsible for the security failure, it especially condemned Netanyahu for undermining coordination between the political and military echelons.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Israel-Hamas-War
But then of course we know Netanyahu had other reasons for not concentrating on his country's security. For years Netanyahu has been facing trial for five different cases of bribery, fraud and breach of trust going back to 2016. Although his trial commenced in 2000, it has still not reached a conclusion. Successive hearings have been postponed for a variety of reasons. Prolonging the war in Gaza and entering into conflicts with other nations ensures that judgement in his trial keeps on being postponed. And all the while the USA backs him. There are many rotten apples in the Middle East. Netanyahu is one of them.

On one occasion I was surprised when I looked at my mileage statement - but for  very different reason. There seemed to be too many miles! I was on one of those really useful round-the-world tickets. When I got to London I was asked by a client to meet up in Palm Springs. Since I still had some spare coupons, before flying to the US I went to BA at Heathrow and had return flights from LAX to Palm Springs on AA added. No problem. In any case it's less than 200 kms between the airports. Arriving back at LAX I was flying up to San Jose where AA had recently started a non-stop flight to Taipei. I then ended up with a stop-over in Hong Kong before getting home to Bangkok.
The airport code for Palm Spring is PPS. For some reason, AA had inserted into the mileage computer the outward ticket as LAX to DPS. Why no one wondered that the next flight was PPS back to LAX I have not the faintest idea. But did I care? DPS is Denpasar, Bali. So I gained 4,000 miles.

The extraordinary journey of Pope Francis continues as his final will has become public. This man who gave up his US$32,000 per month salary and all other manner of perks made arrangements for the funds to go into a Trust. That trust was given to his younger sister after his death. This equally modest woman had never once played up her connection to the Pope. Equally neither brother nor sister had forgotten the other as they corresponded weekly. He asked her not to attend his coronation so as not to draw the media sttention away from his Church. She never flew to be with him in Rome and he never visited her in Argentina. Yet their bond was unbreakable.
When she saw how much he had left her to head up a Trust made up of other good men and women she cried. This was not money for a statue, a church or some other tangible symbol of his position as Pope. It asked her to continue his mission by spending the money on the poor, the homeless, education and other issues close to his heart. Money from many other sources is now flowing into that Trust.
I beieve this has made Pope Francis unique. His life was one of simplicity, generosity of spirit, kindness, love. Now in death his legacy will ensure that his life's work continues.
 

Saw this young man with his horribly wide short jeans on the MRT yesterday.

I felt it was forced. On the other hand it was an interesting twist given the Church's views on women. But having a cardinal "in pectore" suddenly turn up for a concave could not happen in the Catholic Church. Cardinals only have the privileges of Cardinals once they are openly declared as such. Having a Cardinal with a diocese such as Afghanistan was also stretching credibility too far.

I hated the twist.
It was forced, over-blown and, frankly, ridiculous. Many in the cinema, including me, laughed out loud.
The movie didn't need it.

Ha! I recall that John XXIII, as Archbishop of Venice, entered the conclave joyfully certain there was no chance of his becoming Pope! But that conclave was allegedly deadlocked and he emerged as a compromise candidate. He aways cut a very jolly figure!
Was Cardinal Montini also a compromise candidate when he succeeded John XXIII as Pope Paul VI? Although there were a lot of top people in the Church who actively disliked the reforms John XXIII was pushing through especially in calling the Second Vatican Council, it was thought that Montini would continue them. I believe he did to a certain extent, but he had always been a solitary figure and as his papacy continued, he withdrew more into himself. He became much reviled for his encyclical Humanae Vitae in which he affirmed the Church's condemnation of artificial birth control.
Yet he was unable, it seems, to shake off allegations of homosexuality. Although he condemned non-marital sexual relations, the French author Roger Peyrefitte (whose touching book "Special Friendships" about the deep love of two young boys at a Catholic boarding school really first awoke my interest in being gay) wrote about Paul VI's homosexuality in two of his books and later in an interview in a French magazine. Professor Franco Bellegradi, a Vatican insider, had alleged that Cardinal Montini had not only had homosexual affairs whilst serving in Milan, he had a lover who was an actor, Paolo Carlini, and it was because that lover had the first name Paul that he chose Paul for his Papacy. Although as Paul VI he called the allegations "horrible and slanderous insinuations", they later surfaced twice (the latest in 2006) that the Pope had been blackmailed to promote other gay men into positions of power in the Vatican. This is one of the allegations to come out of the VatiLeaks Affair, a report commissioned by Benedict XVI and presented to him in 2013, of the existence of a cabal of homosexual power brokers within the Curia. It has even been alleged in a Vanity Fair article that this was one of the reasons for Benedict XVI resigning. That long article is fascinating and I append it below.
But back to 1978. When the allegations surfaced publicly the Prime Minister Aldo Moro, one of the Pope's closest friends, had been asked to intervene to help stop the rumours. It so happened I was in Rome in May 1978 meeting with a good friend who lived in Italy. We were to be having a very simple dinner at a restaurant on the outskirts of the city where my friend knew the owner, Angela. On the bus we noticed a lot of police sirens, and these continued througout our lovely meal. At the end, Angela refused to accept any payment. All she would say was, "This is a terribly sad day for Italy!" Moro had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades 55 days earlier. The evening we were about to have dinner, Moro's bullet-riddled body had  been found in the trunk of a car. Although the Pope was ill, it is thought the death of this close friend hastened his end. He died just three months later in August.
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/12/gay-clergy-catholic-church-vatican

I notice the OP mentioned Macao. It's way too late to recommend anywhere, partly because the post was made last year and also because I never went to Macao for massage or sex. But since we've been talking about history, it used to be a perfect evening get-away from Hong Kong. Now the American mega casinos and the huge wealth they have created have spoiled it forever for me.
In the early 1980s it was just like a sleepy Mediterranean town with some lovely Chinese additions. Friends and I would take a jetfoil over around 5:30pm, get a taxi to the old fashioned Bela Vista hotel, enjoy drinks on the balcony while looking over to the island of Taipa before taking an ultra-cheap taxi to the outermost island of Coloanne for dinner, usually in open air restaurants like Fernando's or Pinocchio's. The food was great, inexpensive and Portuguese wine extremely cheap since it attracted no tax. It was the perfect antidote to ever-busy Hong Kong. A walk near the historic centre or along the Praia Grande before a taxi back to the jetfoil terminal ended perfectly lovely evenings.

The Bela Vista Hotel as it was being renovated in the early 1990s to become a Mandarin Oriental Hotel

I believe it was.
Perhaps surprisingly, I had a great time in Hong Kong in spite of the law. Although there was not much of a gay scene as such, meeting up with cute Chinese gay guys was actually relatively easy. One of the locations my friends and I loved was one of the small beaches on the south side of the Island, Middle Bay. Apart from difficulties with parking, it was usually packed on weekends with lots of gorgeous guys almost all wearing slim fit trunks and with whom it was not difficult to chat. The large changing room was especially cruisy! Although not especially cruisy in the city areas, as long as your gaydar was working or you had some gay friends, finding other gay friends for hook-ups was not really difficult. But I felt sorry for most gay Chinese in low paying jobs for they really had a tough time.
And of course Hong Kong was a great centre for gay travel then. This was a time when a large number of Tokyo guys really wanted to meet foreigners. My first Asian sauna experience was in Tokyo. As I was entering the steam room, one tall, slim guy coming out was a well known photo book porn star! I loved my Tokyo trips and at one time I was flying for long week-ends every month. PanAm was still flying then and had paticularly cheap tickets. Hotels also were relatively inexpensive. Manila was an extremely popular destination for long sex crazy week-ends, and even cities like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur had their own gay haunts.
In some ways I miss those days. It's like some posters talk about the apps and the bars today. They prefer to see the guys they might off in the flesh rather than rely on apps. In the 'old' days, that was really the only way to meet.

Yeah, I just discovered it by chance on libgenesis. if anyone is interested reading the book they can message me directly and I can provide the link for downloading the book for free. I'm sure you and others who have lived those years would also find interesting the chapters about Thailand and Japan, the other two Asian countries he covers in that book. Personally I also found amusing his chapter about Montevideo, which is a city I plan to visit this August.
 
Was his English name Sam Sasha by any chance? The author mentions meeting this guy called by that name, who had studied at the University of Texas and in Germany and who had written a book called 25 questions about homosexuality and another one that was a compilation of Chinese historical documents about same-sex love, but never provides the name of the latter book.
Yes and I think for the better. I belong to another generation so have known only the HK of the last 10 years but reading that book didn't match the impression of some people in here of how good the old times in HK were compared to nowadays. Honestly, I'm quite happy to be able to discover HK and other Asian cities during these times compared to 30-40, or I would say even 20 years ago.

Sounds quite an interesting book, but clearly it cannot always be completely accurate given the author's extremely broad canvas. The problems in finding gay activists in each country will also not have been easy, if only because of language difficulties, the lack of the internet, some would only be known to smallish local groups and it would be a monumental task to take into account all the historical issues that led to gay life having emerged as it did by 1992. 
As I know from experience, Julian Chan was far from the only gay activist in Hong Kong and the Ten Percent Club was not a club as such. It was a group of gay men who had some form of group newsletter. The fact is there had been several activists both before and after Chan. One of the first was a British man who had arrived to run the small Arts Centre in late 1977. Neil Duncan passed away many years ago and so there is now no need to avoid using his name. Although himself married, he and one of his gay Chinese colleagues were one of the first ones active in openly discussing the anti-sodomy law and calling for gay rights - this at a time when gay activism was almost unknown. It did not make him popular with his establishment Board of Directors.
Soon a Chinese Xiao Ming-xiong, who wrote under the pen name Wu Xiaoming, after studying overseas, returned to Hong Kong and in 1980 wrote "A Chinese Gay's Manifesto". This was followed for some years by an underground newsletter titled the "Pink Triangle". While in the USA, he had read in the Library of Congress a book titled "The Secret History of Homosexuality" about gay life in China published in 1964. He believed the analysis of what made men gay was, as he wrote, "ridiculous". When he returned to Hong Kong he realised that many in the general Chinese community still regarded homosexuality as a foreign vice. He determined to start changing this attitude in his 1984 book in Chinese "A History of Homosexuality".
Before Neil left Hong Kong, the very public scandal over the death of Police Inspector John MacLennan in January 1980 had brought the gay issue on to the front page of all the news media. The fact that this led to major public enquiries kept the issue front and centre for several years, although nothing was done to change the law. What it did gradually do was change the perception of many in the 90+% Chinese community to gay men. From being a foreign vice, there came an understanding that China itself had had a rich gay history long before the arrival of foreigners.
Lastly, I had heard of the existence of some public lavatories as hang outs for gay sex. Yet the thought appals me, as public lavatories in Hong Kong in the 1980s were filthy, rarely cleaned and smelled of . . . I need go no further. Anyone seeking sex there must have been desperate. But then I suspect many were desperate as most younger working men men would be living with their families in tiny flats with nowhere to meet other guys. Thank goodness the times have changed.