Rogie

Abang wrote in post #48 4 hours in Hat Yai! Happened to me a few years ago, marooned there for a few hours en route between Penang and Bkk. I had to change from a bus to the train. I spotted a massage place and nipped in for one. Nice way to 'kill' a few hours to be sure. What is the Mee Rebus at Yong Peng?

Anang wrote in post #47: Could it be your experience in Pattaya was somewhat similar to Shamahan's (newbie poster) where he found owing to the influx of visitors hotels and guest houses raised their prices? If you plan any future visits Abang maybe better to avoid the Christmas and New Year holiday period. As for the deckchairs, at 100 baht you were surely overcharged! As far as i know the rate is still 30 baht and I don't think it matters whether you rent the chair for 30 minutes or all day. I paid 30 baht early last month on the beach in Jomtien, but it wasn't the gay section, it was opposite the guest house I was staying around the soi 9 area. You are right however in your comparison with what 100 baht can buy food-wise. There used to be a place on the corner, just as you turn onto the pedestrianised part leading to Dongtan beach, that sold chickens cooked on a spit. They were either 50 baht or 100 baht, can't remember, but a tasty snack for two people most certainly, washed down with a bottle of beer or water.

Abang wrote in post #5: With these high prices it pays to plan ahead. You don't say whether you were there for the show Abang. If so, and you enjoyed it, it's fair value. If there was no show and what was on offer was lacklustre, i'm afraid that's the risk people take. It might be worth taking the risk if you are determined to off a guy or, owing to a previous visit, know there's a guy likely to appeal to you. Or you could take a quick look, and leave straightaway, if the vibe isn't there.

Shamahan makes Pattaya sound a bit like Losersville-on-Sea. He seems somewhat judgmental regarding Russians and a couple of eateries. Pan Pan has its fans although I don't think it won the title of best Italian in Pattaya (see the thread of that name). As for Sizzler, I don't think I have ever eaten in one; is it a chain? if, so probably a franchise. Franchise places do a roaring trade for those in a hurry or lacking much taste. If I wanted a cheap meal I would go to a food court, assuming there was one nearby. If the town is as awful over the post-Christmas / New Year holiday period as Shamahan makes out, makes sense to stay away if you're a visitor (if you can, sorry Shamahan you couldn't).

Re: Babylon I wrote this a few hours ago but had difficulty posting until now. Many of my comments are similar to Jovianmoon's but I haven't bothered editing my post. If you're bored by Babylon by now, just skip it! I think you have to be realistic. Anyone going there swept along on an Hey Gay/LMTU-induced high expecting to have a wonderful time may well be disappointed. On the other hand you may be lucky, but don't count on it. In my early visits there I did have fun and there were lots of lovely locals but more recently I've lost interest in the kind of thing TW mentions: those dark rooms where the guys - mostly falung seemingly - hang around are a turn-off for me. You turn a corner only to come across another fat falung leaning against a cubicle door. Is he really and truly expecting a young slim Thai guy to usher him into said cubicle? In his dreams maybe! My more recent visits to Babylon I have been mid-afternoon when you can bag a lounger around the pool and alternate between reading the latest thriller, having a swim, and ordering a beer, coffee or whatever drink appeals. The service is always good, and that goes for the very decent restaurant where the food options are tasty and reasonablr value. I get up every so often and go for a wander into the rest of Babylon . . . Unless you yourself are a stunner, keep your expectations realistic and it can be quite enjoyable. If you've not been before, consider going with a friend, either another falung or a local. Then, if your wanderings come to nothing, you've got good company to pass the time with.

I tried to post on FF a few hours ago but couldn't. Still cannot when I tried just now, but it's fine using Chrome. Probably something 'my end' unless somebody else has that problem.

A British tourist has been killed in Thailand on New Year's Eve. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20883483 http://uk.news.yahoo.com/brit-tourist-killed-thailand-gang-attack-165318046.html

I'm not surprised, us Mancunians can never resist a tasty snack.

Back to normal now. The 'Alerts' have stopped.

Me too. Memory fails me. Not sure if they do pizzas, never had one there. The pasta is good and so are the salads. I often see Med-types in there and assume they are Italian. It's a popular place. The waitresses are very efficient. If you are a smoker there are 3 or 4 small tables just outside perfect for you, but that does mean that if you are seated just the other side you may have second-hand smoke as an hors d'oeuvres. I doubt very much whether it's the 'best' in Pattaya, but cheap and cheerful would describe it well I think.

I'm sorry Devint, i am getting bored within the 'confines' of this topic, so I am posting more generally. I am also sorry to say you need to take more care in your replies. I'm sorry but the schoolmaster is 'in'. Your spelling is very poor, although I did laugh at your spelling of guessed . . . gest? that's a nice simple Webster-ish way to spell it! People with: Full time job = not much time, maybe a month at most = splash out! Older person with modest savings, currently out of work = budget carefully Younger person - 'gap year' loads of time but not much money = go for the 200 baht room! Despite the fact I prefer to travel on my own, when I was working I used one particular holiday company. Using a pre-booked tour allows you to budget well in advance, and once you've paid the price of the holiday that just leaves daily expenses, food, drink, souvenirs etc. One could go for an all-inclusive style holiday with as much as you can stuff yourself (and others?) and imbibe until senseless but that's never appealed to me, and I hate to think what kind of people your travelling companions will be. Ditto never fancied a cruise, seems to me a high incidence of bugs aboard ship, and that's if you manage to avoid a Concordia-like fiasco. Good point Z. I took very early retirement, and not because I was wealthy! So I had to budget very carefully on my first RTW trip. Gradually over a period of many years I realised I had been too 'mean' and although I was eating into my savings I could afford to splash out more.

Wow, the plane flips onto its back and only 3 fatalities? That shows how vital it is for everybody to belt up when the plane starts its landing sequence. It must also mean that a properly belted-up passenger will be held in his seat and not fall out and hit the ceiling, which if it were to happen must have a high incidence of serious injury, possibly fatal.

Thank you for the reassurances Michael, but I don't understand the role of Google in all this. Yes, I can see they wouldn't want to have people clicking on a site that comes up after doing a search as that would reflect very badly on their expertise. As they seem to be top dog as far as giving the site the 'all clear', does that mean everything else . . . the anti-virus programs most of us have installed . . . are like nodding dogs and cannot remove their own warnings until such time? In each of the 3 or so posts I've made since the problem I haven't had the use of the bar that allows me to use different size of type, colours, smileys etc. Maybe this has been de-activated as a precaution, however I see other users have used coloured type and larger sizes of type so that may just be peculiar to my operating system. Any ideas what caused the infection NOW? This exploit kit virus has been around quite a while now as there are comments about it on the anti-virus forum going back nearly a year. What about all the extra emoticons installed recently?

I'm sure many of us have read about the awful gang-rape of a young woman in Delhi, India. She has since died from her injuries. India is in a state of shock, and it seems it's finally dawned on many how many women are treated by men, almost as if they are cattle. Just as in America there is an intensive debate over guns, precipitated by the outrage at Sandy Hook, maybe the death of this poor woman at the hands of several thugs will serve to shake the country awake out of its slumbering ignorance and apathy. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20863707

After I'd written post #2 I remembered some Message Boards have a list of similar topics to the one being discussed at the bottom of the page. These will be old posts going back as far as the inception of that particular Board, so in the case of GT that'll be from 2006 I think. So if the topic under discussion is our old friend Saranrom Park any previous topics covering this will feature. Ditto Dusty Springfield or any other name. There must be a way to prevent common words triggering this however, so that a list of all earlier posts where the word Bangkok, bar, boy, etc featured would be unhelpful as it'd throw up too many and be far too general.

Yes, me too. I'm using AVG (free version). Her is part of the AVG Threat Labs web page What is Blackhole Exploit Kit? This threat is caused by code that can be hacked into a webpage. When you browse to a webpage with this threat it will exploit vulnerabilities in your internet browser/plugins and force adware, phishing programs or any other type of fraudulent software to be installed on your device. http://www.avgthreatlabs.com/webthreats/info/blackhole-exploit-kit/

Oh dear, the older I get the more I turn my nose up at new-fangled things like sushi - I don't ever eat that and I can't ever recall going to a Japanese restaurant simply because 1) I don't like sushi or more accurately cannot be bothered to try it, so rather pathetically I have made my mind up without ever trying it, and 2) they didn't have Japanese restaurants around in my part of the world when I were a lad. It's just a repeat of what happened in my grandparents generation, they never took to Chinese or indian food because they didn't eat that kind of food when they were younger. As for me, I love Chinese and Indian food. But the 'westernised' Chinese in Britain and other countries is safe for people like me. I have eaten in China and some of the food was a bit 'rougher' shall we say, but being in a foreign country my adventure button turned on I'm game for most 'local delicacies'. I wouldn't touch shark fin soup though. It might well be delicious, so perhaps not yucky in that sense, but I strongly object to the way the fins are harvested. Not nice. Maybe bird's nest soup is delicious too, but I don't think I'm interested in trying that one either. So my YUCK award goes to: Shark fin soup

Archiving: is that what you have in mind FH? Making info. more accessible and retrievable. Not sure what you mean there exactly FH. Something along the lines of a link within a members post. Like this one? (taken from the wiki Thailand page) I have no idea how one could implement linking certain key words within a current thread to an earlier one. Maybe that's not what you had in mind. I think we have to be careful trying to be too sophisticated, although there's nothing wrong in that and some people enjoy a challenge, that's how we get innovative ideas up and running after all. Certain topics - bars comes to mind as an obvious one - need up-to-date info. So to take one example, although I agree some of the reminiscing about bars specifically, and Thailand in general, in days gone by can be interesting, they are not critical, and I suspect few new readers are going to even think of it, they want current on-the-ground info. preferably written by a member who's recently visited - that's one of this Board's strengths. Established members and frequent visitors to the site can use the search function which I find usually works quite well, although it helps to have a good idea what it is you are searching for, so entering 'Thailand bars' is going to throw up far too many previous topics to be manageable, 133 to be exact. With experience it seems to work best by narrowing it down to one or more key words. Another problem comes to mind. We don't want to get too carried away because some areas are a bit of a Bermuda triangle. Most first-time visitors cannot wait to get to Phuket and the surrounding area, as well as the islands such as Samui. There is very little info on this Board about those places because experienced visitors and ex-pats rarely go there. This is a big area and needs careful consideration, but these are my initial thoughts. I see the Articles about Thailand forum is currently a work in progress. Why not wait until it is unvelied and see if it can answer some of the issues raised? For example, to take a recent thread Bangkok Cheap Accommodation, that could be added to the Bangkok listing, so that general topics are filed there as well as more specific places such as Babylon Hotel, Malaysia Hotel etc. Ditto listings for Pattaya, Chiang Mai etc.

FH, that sounds like a good assessment. I can see now there's more to it than I suggested, more than just an Englishman firing a few broadsides at a juicy target. An interviewer has to allow for the feelings and honour of the person being attacked so as to ensure a fair balance between probing questions and the interviewees replies. If an person being interviewed tries to wriggle out of a pertinent question, it is quite within the rights of the interviewer to be persistent, but if the questions are answered fully and honestly according to the beliefs of the interviewee he should be shown some respect. Maybe grudging respect, but respect nevertheless. I haven't watched any videos of the show so far but may do.

I disagree! The one in the thread shows a handsome mixed race guy. The one on his profile just shows his back (he's a bit of a show-off, and why not as he's probably spent a fair few bucks getting 'em done). I agree you cannot say they are definitely the same person, but equally, to say there's no resemblance seems unfair to me.

You mean the "stupid man" outburst? What kind of reaction would we have seen if Morgan was an American? The same, or would it have been muted? The old saying "methinks you protest too much" sometimes used to convey the feeling another person may have a few skeletons in his own cupboard. Ditto America? Many Americans must be feeling pretty low as a result of Sandy Hook and know in their hearts things ought to change . . . Morgan has succeeded in rubbing the NRA up the wrong way, but because the NRA is an American institution and Morgan is British, the average American won't like it. Imagine what would happen if one of us went on to Thai TV and attacked the government or some Thai institution, calling them "stupid". http://www.bbc.co.uk...t-arts-20838729

Seems fair. Plenty of old cars on the road, certainly in Britain and many other countries. Lovingly maintained, and in many cases painstakingly restored classic cars are a joy to behold, and provided the brakes, steering etc are up to scratch ought to be just as safe as a modern car. They almost certainly won't have all the bells and whistles of a modern car, but if you take airbags for example, there are problems associated with those. Most do a small annual mileage in any case and are usually owned by enthusiasts driving with circumspection! Same could be said for old WW2 aircraft, Spitfires and the like. Many people would pay a king's ransom just to be able to go up in one of those things; occasionally a flight in a Spitfire is offered as a prize in a competition. There are rumours of a cache of Spitfires buried somewhere in Burma. The parts for them are reputedly in their original crates so the hope is that if they can be found they can be re-assembled and flown! Any 'enthusiasts' in Burmese civil aviation?

Good point. The more you think about it the more complicated the aftermath of an accident must be. There's the damage to the vehicle itself for which the money to repair it will come from your own insurance - class 1 is a term I've heard used - if you're living in Thailand and own a car, or if you are driving your bf's car. If the accident is in a hire car or hired motor cycle the hire company insurance should cover it. There may be an excess of course. The last time I hired a car the excess was 10,000 baht. As for damage to yourself, that should be covered by travel insurance for those of us visiting Thailand, provided all the conditions are met of course, such as valid documentation as already mentioned. For visitors with travel insurance, as far as I know there are no restrictions on driving a hire car, or one with the owner's permission, in Thailand. The situation with motor cycles is more complex, and it's my understanding that in certain circumstances you will not be covered by your travel insurance. Some motor cycle hire companies will pay a proportion of the costs of medical care up to a limit, but that wouldn't be much use in the event of a serious injury requiring plenty of medical treatment and care. I don't know what residents in Thailand do about getting good coverage for accidents that involve serious injury to themselves. Maybe medical insurance would cover that. Apologies if I have got any of that wrong. It is a bit of a minefield I think.

I'll stick my neck out as I think he's genuine. Why so sure? Well, he posted a pic of himself on another thread. Check out: http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/topic/7366-coming-to-bangkok-for-the-very-first-time/#entry52769

Dirty? sexual? Well not sure about sexual but dirty yes, the scultpure's on a patch of grass that can't be all that clean, no doubt the local dogs make a beeline for it . . . My theory is it's some kind of Earth Mother thing, spewing out her offspring as they gravitate towards the outstretched arms of what could be construed as freedom. Freedom from the all-encompassing and stifling constraints of the Earth Mother. It might be a sexual process, but it certainly isn't sensual.