forrestreid

Oh, Christian, you are such a fact-obsessed person, you would put Gradgrind to shame! I am sure there is no shortage of small factual errors in the Osborne book, I wouldn't dispute it, but what he was trying to get at was the SOUL of Bangkok. It has to be read and appreciated with that in mind. [flicks hair and sighs theatrically] But it takes all types to make the World, I suppose (I can be the most nerdy guy going sometimes myself, particularly when it comes to transport networks), so here is a web page that is more likely to gladden your heart: http://www.nomadicnotes.com/southeast-asia-rail-map/ It is a map created of all the railways that are proposed currently in South-East Asia, and what the network will look like after they are built (in the unlikely event they ARE all built). Cool to look at at think about the day when you get get a train all the way from Yangon to Saigon, via Bangkok... The rest of the website, about travel generally and Vietnamese travel in particular, is well worth a browse too.

You could make a good argument that united Ireland would have been a lot MORE likely to have occurred by now if the Good Friday agreement had been rejected by Ulster Unionists, rather than accepted by them (on the basis that there would have been no temporary cessation in the constitutional crisis there, which would have pushed out the Westminster government quicker). Either way, I very much doubt that a united Ireland will happen before "Scoxit". I am curious as to what makes you think that the vote against independence will be larger than last time? I know financially, things are a bit worse with the dip of oil prices, etc, but I think psychologically the Brexit debacle will help the independence cause. Last time, the EU issue was a plus for the Union - with concerns of Scotland having to apply again for membership of the EU, and the argument that the only way to stay in the EU was via the Union etc. Now that whole argument is neutralised – in fact people will be heading into the unknown either way, which will cut down on the anxiety generated by the whole "leap in the dark " factor.

Hello Bryan, Welcome to the board. I didn't realise you would be reading the comments yourself when I wrote them, you picked a nice time to join the board! Glad you took my comments in the fair-minded (albeit blunt) way they were intended.

I think it was fairly clearly implied by your "get off the reservation" comment at the end. I should have said "what the OP implies" rather than "what the OP states" I suppose, but it's a pretty minor distinction .

Another posting on here recently mentioned the online Stickman column. As a sometimes reader of it, usually I find the best thing in it (for the gay reader anyway) is his gleanings from the newspapers of Thai related stories. But one he missed was an article recently in the New York Times by Lawrence Osborne, talking about the neighbourhood of Bangkok (basically middle Sukhumvit) that Osborne is currently living in. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/travel/bangkok-thailand-city-of-spirits-culture.html?_r=0 It is called "My Bangkok - City of Spirits" and he talks about walking around the city and visiting his favourite haunts, especially late night bars. It is well worth a look. It may be in rather purple prose, but for somebody who lives outside Thailand, like me, and visits as a tourist, it really caught the exotic feeling of modern Bangkok (including the bits they are trying to kill off, like street drinks carts) and will certainly arouse nostalgia in many forum readers. Gave me some ideas for bars I might wish to try when I next visit too. Osborne wrote a whole book about an earlier period he spent living in in Bangkok, called "Bangkok Days", which is worth a look if you like style of writing in the article.

Actually, contrary to what the OP states, I think Stickman is actually fairly regularly read by quite a few posters here, including myself, I had actually read this article with interest before I saw the OP. As regards what i thought of it, basically Nirishguy beat me to it, was going to post the same. Flowers seems to have had a slow burn strategy up to this, and made clever use of social media (the business he started out with) to get people into his new bars, carefully supervising management, making sure the have the right farang staff, etc Now he seems to be rather suddenly speeding up, if he really plans to buy a bar a month, he will find it nearly impossible to keep ensuring the quality of staff, never mind keeping a social media presence for them all. The impossibility of expanding quickly and keeping up quality are why most big chains you have heard of, like MacDonalds, that want to expand fast go for franchising rather than owning. He seems to be going for an all-or nothing strategy with the bars, buying them up like they are going out of fashion, remortgaging his house to do so, etc. Either he has spotted that the bars in general are undervalued at current market and plans to quickly expand and sell off in two or three years (perhaps a clever strategy, if that is his game), or else he has spotted a magic formula to enable him to expand fast and maintain quality (more unlikely, imho) Personally, I suspect he will burn brightly and burn out quickly, like Nirish says. But unlike Vessy, I dont know him, so this is only me speculating. I have to concede to him that he operates the biggest and best straight-orientated Pattaya chat forum in Pattaya-Addicts, so he is obviously no fool, and does seem to genuinely have a good reputation. However, if I was thinking of investing in his business, that interview made him seem to have a rather "manic" personality, which would concern me a bit. But best of luck to him anyway

Looks like a fairly comprehensive itinerary. There is a Youtube guy named Harald Baldr who followed a similar route to the northern route above, on a motorcycle last year. It forms a good overview of what such a route is like. He did 12 episodes in all, and collated them in a Youtube playlist called "Unseen Thailand Tour" View the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIvXbONfyd8sPOJED4y-GcKMledkK9TpW He is a bit of an arrogant straight guy, but he also quite good-looking and is fond of taking off his shirt, so that makes him a bit easier to like, lol. Worth viewing if you are thinking of touring some of the back roads of Thailand.

Hi Numazu. What a great post! That was quite a sexy story with the tall guy. The set up like a porn story I have not been posting in this thread over the last few weeks, even though I have been reading it every day, as I was waiting till the end to congratulate you, but I couldn't resist after reading that posting. And as well I was afraid that I would have forgotten about some of the gems on this tread, like the abs photo of ShanBoy (I had to revisit that post over a few days to make sure I had the exact contours of his body memorised...) or those photos of the balloon trip over Bagan. This has been a true classic thread, it has really put a longing on me to visit Burma now, even though I was thinking of Vietnam as the side-trip to my next SE Asia adventure, and you cant say better for a trip report than it makes people say "I want to visit there too!"

Like Hutchison above, I think it means S for Sadist, and M for Masochist. The "soft" things just means that they only do some light S&M Therefore, "Soft S" means the boy would be willing to take the dominant, sadist role in some light S&M. and "Soft M" means that the boy would be willing to take the submissive, masochist role in some light S&M. So one would expect that, as abidismaili found, that the Soft S designation would be a lot more common that the Soft M.

Have passed it many times, but never stopped by. I think I should maybe add it to my list of establishments to visit on Soi Twilight. My mind is usually on other things than a quiet beer when I enter that Soi, perhaps I am missing out.

Hi all, For those in the UK and Ireland you might be interested to note that a new BBC documentary series starts on BBC Two tomorrow night. Focuses on the natural world, but a bit about the people of Thailand too, I believe. Link to the web-page about the series here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08819cv Will probably be available on Youtube or the like a few days later- they usually are.

Well, since you did ask for constructive criticism... One think that was missing was some pictures of the people you came across in your travels - particularly the cute guys. Now I don't mean so much the massage guys, etc, you had sex with as I know that many guys are shy about posting such photos for various reasons (although the guys who do post them, such as Vessey, are much appreciated). I mean more the cute guys you encounter such in a non-sexual context such as tuk-tuk drivers or moto-drivers or waiters. In your account you mentioned the cute tuk-tuk guy with the holes in his jeans and the handsome moto driver in Preah Vihear. I had to imagine what they looked like as, but sometimes imagination might not be as good as reality. A photo would have been nice. All the photos in your account added a lot to it, but I dont think there was a human in any of them.

Fantastic trip report Vinapu! I myself was in Siem Reap two years ago, and it brought back many memories. Liked the way you combined seeing your desired sites with leaving plenty of time for the all-important reviving massage after... The places on your "must catch up with list" correspond to a considerable degree with my own - Preah Vihear, the West Mebon, Phnom Krom. But I hadn't been aware of Samnor Preah Kuk. That has now been added to the "catch up" list. Well done.

Thanks for posting those, bucknaway.

Well, the consensus seems to be against it. I have to admit, think the size of the board mitigates against it, as I dont think there are the numbers to justify it. As Firecat says, if you dont like those posts, dont click on them. However, it would make some posters feel a bit more at ease (and I am more talking about the readers than the posters of such reports here, lol) if they were a bit harder to access. But that would disadvantage posters like stjinte, who hadnt posted at all before he started reading trip reports earlier this year to get info prior to his first visit. So it is a conundrum. It would be interesting to see though,as an experiment, if at least one of the main gay Thai boards tried it out for a few months.

Trip Reports can be a divisive topic in this forum, while they are the most popular sorts of threads, there can be controversies about the subject matter and level of details. Many people like to see pics of the guys, and to get all the full account of encounters, while some others dislike having the details of the sex lives of others laid open for all to see. Others like them but worry about "outsiders" seeing details the shouldn't or have legitimate concerns that some working guys might not appreciate their pictures being up where all and sundry, such as maybe their workmates from the bar, can see. In the (much larger) straight forums focused on Pattaya and the nightlife, one common solution to this problem is to have an "Advanced member" section, This is a section where only trusted members, those who have demonstrated there bona fides in some way, can post. In one well known forum, you have to have made 50 good-quality posts before you can get admittance to the section. In this section, some more detail is posted of peoples adventures in the bars and massage parlours. there is an understanding all the salacious details of what went on in the bedroom may be posted, plenty of uncensored photos, etc. The main advantage being, as it is an a "fenced off" section of the forum, prying eyes can not see it, you cannot just join up and be reading five minutes later, you have to prove yourself first before you can view that area. Also, it make sit easy for all those who are embarrassed to read the gory details to avoid them So what are the disadvantages? One obvious one is that this forum (like all the Thailand gay forums) has quite a small audience. If you whittle the readership down to all who have made 50 posts (or more realistically, 25 or 20) you will get a fairly small number. And if they are only posting trip reports in that forum, you might only get one thread a week or less. So you would have the ""tumbleweed" problem - no one looks at the forum because there are few threads, few people looking at it mean few people think of posting, etc. But there are ways to counter this of course, such as making that "Advanced forum" the first in the forum list for everybody, even if they cannot see it to make sure they are aware of it, encouraging people to post "G-rated" trip reports in the main forum at the same time as the post more naughty versions of same in the "Advanced forum", so people realise what they are missing, etc. Or perhaps (if it would be possible), letting ordinary member see the postings in the Advanced forum, but not the pictures unless they were Advanced members? So, what do people think?

Thanks for the video clip Vessey, brought back happy memories of sitting in Boyztown of an evening! This thread is getting a bit bizarre with the news that some of the critics of Vessey's posts proclaiming that they have him on ignore anyway, thus meaning that they only have second hand accounts of the threads....perhaps keeping out of the discussion totally would be an idea then? I detest those right-wing Christian campaigners as much as the next person, but when some of the establishments mentioned have facebook pages, I think the cat is rather rout of the bag already. The str8 side of this is so open, with several forums (including some where Vessey posts accounts of his str8 activities, to considerably much more appreciation than he gets here) posting multiples of the threads here, and far more explicitly, that I think we are probably fairly far down the list.

I want to add my voice to those who love your trip reports. I thought it was a brilliant report and I hope you ignore the stupid trolls and keep postings them!

Know this will be one you all love to hate, but I still remember this one from the first show show in a gogobar I attended, in Phuket. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYSAcS34nVY (Can anybody tell me how to place it here as a video, rather than just a link?)

You were a cutie back in the day ryanasia (despite what seems like a huge cold sore on your lower lip....I am sure it wasnt though)

Speaking as one individual, I must say that I really enjoyed visiting the beaches and temples of Thailand, and they are part of the reason I have come several times. When choosing a holiday destination I aim to have both gay fun and see the World's best sights - hence going to places like Berlin, Barcelona and Thailand where it is possible to have both. Another important aspect from a "conventional" tourist point of view is the handiness of Bangkok as a hub for for a western Europeans heading East - I have use Bangkok as a hub on trips to Laos, Cambodia, Bali, etc, as much because it was the cheapest and handiest as because it enabled me to have a few nights of fun in BKK on the way.

I must say that I appreciate that the pics dont seem to be too touched up, four pics from different angles, seem to give a good impression of what the guy is like.

By host bar I mean a bar where there are guys in street clothes to keep you company, join you for drinks, etc. and who are usually offable. As opposed to a gogo bar where there are guys in skimpy clothing and dancing on stage, and who are always offable The Jomtien Complex has several gay host bars.

There are two Bamboo bars in Pattaya, the straight one is on Pattaya Second Road (almost at the junction with Walking St), the gay one is on Thappraya Road in Jomtien (almost on the junction with Jomtien Beach Road). Very different places, don't get them mixed up! Surprised the gay Bamboo Bar doesnt get more mentions on the gay boards, the Bamboo bar is the the only male "host bar" in the Pattaya area open before 5 pm, AFAIK. Handy if you are on Dongtan beach and bored by 3-4 pm. I met a guy there once who I went on to have a relationship with for 18 months, so I have a bit of a soft spot for the place.....

If you are not too squeamish, this gives you a handle with a bit more blood'n'gore. Game of Thrones: The Honest Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LHmkVqYgKo