macaroni21

@Olddaddy Has your stay been affected by power cuts? There is this Reuters article from 3 months back: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/philippines-warns-serious-power-cuts-heat-outages-strain-grids-2026-05-14/

That was last Friday. That was yesterday (Sunday), two days later.

@jimmie50 posted a first-hand account of a visit in May this year. Personally, I have never done business in that shop, though in 2019, I thought I had visited. https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2020/02/12/the-full-gay-works-in-a-girlie-shop/ My next two walk-bys were also written up: (2024): https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2024/09/21/magically-in-business/ and (2026): https://shamelessmacktwo.travel.blog/2026/04/19/magically-still-in-business/ My posts are meant for visits; I rarely post about mere walk-bys. The fact that I wrote this shop up on two walk-bys says a lot! If anyone wants to be an intrepid reporter, I'd suggest a visit after sundown. Things may be different from what's been reported by @jimmie50 and me in 2024 and 2026, which were afternoon occasions.

Is that why there are "tar" balls on Jomtien beach today? 🤓

I recall there was a thread earlier about Thailand trying to insist that all arrivals present proof of travel insurance, an idea that I think has since been abandoned, and it was pointed out that in practice it would be madness because insurance policies come in all shapes and sizes and different languages to boot. How would any officer at Thai immigration be able to check whether the document is what the traveller claims it is? As for young Aussies and selling their homes... there is another way to make some money to pay medical bills: sell their bodies. I can imagine a niche market for "fun" with someone in a leg cast and an arm in a sling, though bleeding wounds might not command much market value. 🤣

We agree on this. But you are still conflating discrimination because of some statute or cultural disfavour with persecution. Persecution has to be demonstrated as real, imminent and personal, not theoretical, even if laws are not codifying it. If a gay person has received death threats, or been arrested before, or been bashed in an alley with the authorities taking no action, that person may make a case for asylum. Ditto a gay woman whose very conservative family (including the village community where she lives) is forcing her, on threat of death (honour killing) to marry a man in an arranged marriage. However, the presence of discriminatory laws itself is insufficient. It does not rise to the level of persecution. Look no further than the active threads in other parts of this forum about sex trips to Jamaica, North Africa, Malaysia, and some countries of Subsaharan Afirca.

Besides the question of how many among the 60,000 who swam across the fence were gay and whether that miniscule number, if any, would justify giving all 60,000 temporary asylum so that they can be processed over the next few years to find that miniscule number, there is another loose use of a word we need to be aware of. Discrimination is not persecution. If discrimination alone were enough to justify refugee status, then all 8 billion people on earth would qualify. Everyone is discriminated on one count or another -- too old, too young, too fat, too thin, too female, too male, too tall, too short, too colorblind, too bipolar... including through legally sanctioned barriers on account of religion, place of birth, previous criminal convictions and countless other dimensions. Laws against homosex are not uniquely terrible and do not rise to the level of persecution.

The choice of words can so confuse that a conversation goes heywire. These 60,000 people breaching the border in Ceuta are not refugees. Too often this word is used loosely in discourse. Refugees are people fleeing demonstrable threats to life and limb (e.g. from conflict or natural disasters) or persecution in their home countries. These young men (and they were mostly young men) were simply hoping to rush into the EU, in violation of border laws, for economic reasons. Several of them spoke to the media, and they themselves have openly said this was their motive. Any sympathy needs to be calibrated against this reality rather than be dialled up by the misuse of the word 'refugee'. That they were fleeing nothing can be seen from the fact that over 48,000 of them so far have peacefully returned to Morocco, albeit under heavy security pressure. The videos also show that many of them are not even Moroccan but Subsaharan. Reporters have pointed out that in the past, the Moroccan government has aided or encouraged border storming for political purposes whenever they were unhappy with Spain or the EU, e.g. in pursuit of their (Morocco's) imperialistic ambitions over Western Sahara or over their feud with Algeria. Whether this instance had any government involvement, nobody can yet say. This reminds me of Belarus using migrants to put pressure on Poland and the EU a few years back. Members here of more leftwing persuasion should be careful of what they wish for. Misplaced sympathy for economic border-violators and the loose border control that results will lead to a local population developing a sense that their own security and social balance are under threat. No use arguing if this is empirically true, for feelings are powerful factors when it comes to voting. Once people get the feeling that their own government has lost control of their country's borders, there is a much greater likelihood of voting for rightwing parties, whose agenda on many other issues, e.g. LGBT rights, social safety net, may be contrary to leftwing ideals. I am sure I don't have to list examples of how often this has happened in recent history. In short, misplaced sympathy is a big, big own goal.

Circling back to the subject of Indian tourists in Pattaya, here's something from The Pattaya News, 2 days ago. Members living in Thailand may follow this channel, but those outside may not, so I hope it's interesting news -- even if rather horrific!

You guys may be confusing Fast Track with Priority Lane.

Maybe we risk over analysing or over simplifying the giving face/losing face issue. After all, people in Western cultures also understand the value of not causing embarrassment to others. On the other hand, and with a bit of reflection, the video narrator's point about certain cultures giving more weight to context could prove more helpful in understanding behaviours. It seems to me that in certain cultures (we may tend to speak of Western cultures, but I am pretty sure that's both over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time) there's a greater reliance on explicitly stated boundaries, whereas in other cultures, people aren't so exercised if things are left unsaid. Furthermore, particularly in American culture, there is a valorisation of attempts to test or push the boundaries -- we see in media depictions of heroes who go right up to the edge of the permissible or even flout the rules and not only get away with doing so, but winning the day to cheers all round. The valorisation of individualism goes with it. Other cultures may consider this too brash, even uncouth. They expect members of the community to be alert to non-verbal cues and situational settings and to modify one's behaviour accordingly in a way that is respectful of others. In a sense, one might say such a culture has a higher quotient of communalism. It has struck me that many older Hollywood depictions of Asian males almost take this to paper-thin stereotypes: where the Asian character is a man of few words, with some supposedly sagacious characters speaking in riddles, but also they are receding characters, not pushing their way forward. And as has often been pointed out, the Asian male in such Hollywood productions are not generally seen as heroic, or even sexy -- by Western audiences. That digression having been done with, here's another: on some other threads in the Thailand forum, we regularly see Western visitors who are less frequent visitors to Thailand asking questions about how one would know whether the shop or boy would be H or not H -- I think folks who are unfamiliar with Thailand also have difficulty distinguishing been S and SS -- and how much to tip, and so on. They display a great need for explicitly stated information about offerings, limits and costs. The Thais and frequent visitors to this country (and expats) seem to have no need for such explicit information. They do need some clues (and have learned how to spot the clues) but they don't need to have all the T's crossed and I's dotted. In the moment itself, they work out what's possible and what's not and how to navigate their way to what they would desire. The older ones among us who used to cruise in parks and alleyways in the pre-internet age were masters of unspoken context, body language and signals to figure out a situation. Perhaps the newer, younger members of this board never developed such skills for lack of learning opportunties?

This video is about the bunch of Italian exchange students who caused a furore earlier this month. I am putting it here because the narrator explains very well the huge cultural gap (not just on the part of the kids, but the teachers too) that laid the ground for the incident. For about two minutes from 16 minutes 30, the narrator puts it succinctly. Thai culture is a high context culture, whereas most Western cultures are low context cultures. As a result, Westerners do not learn, when growing up, to read social and situational context the way Thais and many East Asian societies do, or give these readings the weight that is required. This is inseparable from the issue of giving face, which I discussed in an earlier post on this thread (9 July).

Well said! Sometimes, attention seekers are great fun too, such as those who like to hang over a balcony with their arse out in full view, while being jackhammered.

Back to the original topic about ncreasing homophobia in Islamic countries (maybe other countries too), here's a news story about Indonesia from Channel News Asia, dated yesterday: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/lgbtq-indonesia-defence-policy-national-security-threat-6255191 How a national security threat label has reignited Indonesia's LGBTQ debate Indonesia last October classified the "spread of LGBTQ culture" as one of the country's non-military threats. A series of developments thrust the provision into the public eye this month, sparking a debate. For more than eight months, a provision tucked away in an Indonesian presidential regulation on national defence drew little public attention. In an appendix to Presidential Regulation No. 111/2025 on the General National Defence Policy signed in October last year, the government classified the "spread of LGBTQ culture" as one of the country's non-military threats. The clause, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer culture, appeared alongside a range of other threats deemed capable of affecting national resilience. They included illegal trafficking, natural resource theft, terrorism, atheism and radicalism. A presidential regulation is a legally binding regulation published in the State Gazette, while General National Defence Policy documents are highly technical and usually attract little public attention outside government and defence circles. But a series of developments thrust the provision into the public eye this month, sparking a debate on the place of LGBTQ issues in state policy and the extent to which social issues should be framed within Indonesia's defence strategy. The issue quickly spread beyond social media into mainstream Indonesian media with national outlets including Antara, Kumparan, and Tempo examining the regulation and prompting public responses from senior government officials. Some observers and activists say the clause could heighten discrimination against LGBTQ individuals in society, even as Indonesian ministers have defended the regulation while saying the government has no intention of curtailing the fundamental rights of citizens. "As Indonesian citizens, LGBTQ people are entitled to education, employment, healthcare and other public services without restrictions, segregation or discrimination," Indonesia's Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai told CNA in a phone interview. But he added that Indonesian society is not ready to accept the LGBTQ community, even as the state remains obliged to respect, protect and fulfil every citizen's rights to education, employment, healthcare and public services. "The time has not yet come to formally recognise them as an official group because society is not yet ready to accept them," he said. --- read more via the link; there's no paywall. It's a long article.

I haven't been back to Phuket for ages so there's no recommendation to contribute. But I have an indelible memory of overcharging by tuktuks, with one of the worst cases involving a trip between Patong and Karon. Unless the situation has vastly improved, how does one even get to a restaurant at a different beach without being scalped?