RonanTheBarbarian

To all those people saying "just get the right Visa beforehand", i would point out that it is still permissable (and a valid choice to make)to travel to Thailand with a Visa exemption, and to make two back-to-back Visa exempt trips if you wish and are flying in and out of the country each time.

The last time i was in SE Asia , I was there for slightly over 30 days, and I used used Bangkok as a base. (ie, I started and ended my trip with a Suvarnabhumi flight)

At first i thought I would have to get a tourist Visa, which involves shelling out €35 in my case, as I would be in SE Asia for more than 30 days in total, and I knew my flight out would be more than 30 days in the future on the day i first arrived in BKK airport.

However, as I had a flight booked out to Bali in the middle of that period, prior to the 30 days, I realised that this would suffice as my exit for visa exemption purposes, and I flew out of BKK and back, getting the second visa exempt entry on my arrival back from Bali.

This way I was able to avoid having to shell out for a Visa, which I believed to be a perfectly respectable thing to do.

But now it seems a day trip to KL is seen as abusing the system by some on here, even for a woman who seems like bona fide tourist (base on the OP).

How long does one have to be away to count as a bona fide tourist for all those who are criticising the woman?

I presume they think my trip to Bali was ok as I stayed 5 days.

But what if i stayed three?

Or only one?

Surely if one has onward tickets that seem to show that one will be less than 90 days in the kingdom in a 6 month period, it is perfectly fine to do as many visa exempt entries as one wants in that time?

I am thinking of a friend who was in Thailand last year, and in a 40 day stay, went to Laos, Cambodia,Malaysia, and Vietnam, all on separate trips with flights out of Bangkok.

Presumably when the new rules come in for airport arrivals, that will be impossible without a visa (triple entry at that - €105).

Well, in fairness, my generic anti-Israeli government speech (as you call it) was in response to YOUR generic "why are they all picking on Israel when there is loads more baddies out there " argument, which you brought in unprompted.

But this argument is turning into to a bit of a two person debate between ourselves , so perhaps letting it drop down the rankings would be a good thing unless there is some fresh blood to bring more perspectives.

Jingthing, I have a lot of sympathy for what you say in your first paragraph. Targetting individual artists is not the way to go I think. But it is hard to see what the other options are.

As regards your idea that "informational pickets" would be a better way to go, I remember that when an Irish pro-Palestinian group had a picket outside a concert where an Israeli orchestra were playing here in Dublin, they were accused of being "intimidatory", etc.

I have a feeling that only the most decorous of letters to the editor (and in an obscure publication at that) would pass muster as acceptable for the partisans on the other side of this issue.

Regarding the other hundred evil regimes, there is some truth in that. But only some - Israel is known around the World as an ally of the US (recipient of huge sums of US aid). Therefore what it does reflects on the US - and badly in many cases.

It matters not for the reputation of the US what Iran (or Syria or North Korea) do as everybody know they are enemies. Even countries such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia are known to be allied to the US purely as a marriage of convenience. However, Israel and the US are best buds - the US claims that part of the reason it supports Israel is that it is the "only democracy in the Middle East".

Therefore,the US is claiming its support for Israel is based on democracy and an ethical foreign policy.

That carries certain expectations and obligations. And it seems not at all surprising to me Israel question loom large in the imagination of the American left, including the doughty lefty GLBT campaigners.

Well, Jingthing, to bring it back to the gay issue, what would be an acceptable way in your mind for opponents of "pinkwashing" to fight it?

Jingthing, as regard the Israeli teenagers, i am not defending what happened to them (as I said before, I think boycotts that affect israeli individuals are counter-productive), however there are many individual tragedies in the Israeli Palestinian situation.At least the teenagers only faced a one-day setback, which I am sure they will recover from.

The New York Times had an Op-Ed just this week from an Israeli Arab who is married to a woman from the West bank. They met in the United States, but cannot go back to live in his hometown in Israel because she wouuld be barred from living with him, simply because she was born in the West Bank.

This situation may continue for the rest of their lives.

You can read the story here:

http://www.nytimes.c...-are-equal.html

If the link is blocked here on TV, you can get to it by Googling "Not All israeli Citizens are Equal Yousef Munayyer"

I hope you will join me, Jingthing, in stating that the way the Israeli government is treating the Munayyer family is despicable.

Jingthing, again you are obscuring the fact that the target of the SF boycott is the financing coming from the PR arm of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Can you name one reputable Arts organisation in the USA that has accepted Iranian funding recently?

Because unless you can (and I accept that it is unlikely that the current Iranian regime would be going around looking for Arts festivals to sponsor), you are not making like for like comparisons.

Mr. Kirchick, the author of the above article (as well as being member of a neo-con lobbying organisation)claims:

"Could one imagine a group of American liberals boycotting a group of gay Zimbabweans or Iranians...".

As the boycotting stems from the alleged pinkwashing, the above example would only make sense if the Iranian or Zimbabwean government were sponsoring gay arts events in the USA to try and improve the image of their government.

Is this likely, does anybody think?

And in the vanishingly unlikely event that the Iranian government sponsored gay arts events in the US, you can be pretty dam_n sure that pro-Israel groups would kick up a stink about it, I can assure you.

And to get back to the SF Film Festival in particular, although I am personally rather leery of boycotts in general (particulary when it effects individual film-makers who may have divergent opinions on the Palestinian occupation), in fairness to this boycott, it is obviously directly related to the government funding of the festival by Israel.

Here is a quote from the website of the group calling for the boycott:

"By continuing to accept money from the Israeli consulate, Frameline is participating in the re-brand Israel campaign, and is helping it pinkwash its negative image, its grave violations of international law, human rights, and crimes against the Palestinian people. By accepting the Consulate’s money, Frameline is actively helping to create a false positive image of Israel as a queer-friendly “democracy,” turning people’s attention from occupation and apartheid."

I will not include a link to the above as I think TV does not like links, but if you throw a bit of it into Google you will bring up the page.

They also explicitly claim that individual Israeli artists and their work are not targeted by the call to boycott.

Actually, now that i have read a few of websites on the issue, (I had never heard of the festival or boycott before) it is obvious that the whole nub of the issue for most of those supporting the boycott is about the Israeli consulate providing FUNDING to the Festival.

Looking back at Jingthing's original post, the fact the he didn't mention that AT ALL that the issue of funding was the basis for the controversy meant that the whole thread started out from completely biased premise (in that it was seen as a boycott of Israeli film pure and simple, rather than opposition to the Israeli funding of the organisation).

Not a good show, Jingthing, not a good show at all.

Well, tombkk, at least you are consistent.

However, by the late eighties such an opinion would be very out of step with general opinion in North America or Europe. The boycott of SA was nearly universal at that stage.

The more general point is that while many people may complain that proposed boycotts "drag sport" (or film,or whatever) into the political arena, the fact is most people are all in favour of boycotts when it is THEIR cause.

This can have a slightly comical effect, as in the eighties where the strongest voices in the USA in favour of a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (conservative Republicans) , suddenly got all concerned about "mixing politics and sport" when sports boycotts of South Africa became an issue in the early eighties.

Well, I voted No, because I think we have problems enough without interfering in another country's politics. A Film Festival should be a Film Festival, not a political platform.

Same here. I am totally against politicizing any arts or sports events.

Would you have had the same opinion regarding the South African sports boycot in the Eighties tombkk?

Ha, so whats your opinion that l did all that's necessary but lost most cos my wife wanted to tour the world with another guy and took most of my financial and home building in the settlement.

Some here are blind to individual cases. fuc_k, l get angry with some snotty nosed do gooders.

I see three mistakes here.

1. Choosing the wrong wife

2. Having made mistake number 1compounding it by choosing the wrong lawyer

3. Having made mistake numbers 1 and 2 resorting to the argument that your problems are caused by other people

Well, GuestHouse, in fairness, not sure how having a good lawyer would be have made much difference in this case. I don't know if you know much about British divorce law, but my understanding is that if he was married to the wife for 20 years, no matter even if he had Rumpole of the Bailey as his lawyer, she is going to get a good chunk off him.

This isn't a woman bashing point, by the way, just a point of information. I actually find it interesting how posters in threads like this always seem surprised that the wife gets a lot of the assets (there seems to be an awful lot of men in the western world who find a wife divorces them after 20-30 years of marriage who like whinging on the internet). But the wronged husbands rarely tell the whole story. I know a guy in real life, was married for 25 years with three children. Last one was mildly mentally handicapped, wife stayed at home with kids for all the years. They split up and she got the house, and a small enough maintenance payment. Later one found out he was on a message board (not this one) and i looked at some of his threads. He went into several threads about divorces whining about the fact that he had been robbed in his divorce - nothing about the fact that the wife had devoted her life to minding the house and kids. He even had the cheek to say that the wife "never bothered getting a job even when the kids were grown" without adding the fact that one of the kids had the mind of a child even when he had reached adulthood.

I

John Everingham was a quite well known photographer of the Vietnam war era.

He smuggled his wife (later to be Ananda's mother ) out of Laos in 1977 in dramatic circumstances.

There was a biopic made of the affair, starring Michael Landon, no less (for younger ThaiVisa readers,Michael Landon was big in the Eighties - for him to star in your biopic was quite an honour in those days!).

Perhaps if you try to make some friends on Gayromeo or similar, at least you could get to know them for a while before going out with them.

One tip to see how genuine a guy is would be to ask them for their Facebook page.That usually tells quite a bit more about a person than a short online chat.

I was chatting with a guy recently and we exchanged Facebook details.That meant I was able to look at his pictures, his social peers etc. Going from you can see in his pictures he does have that office job he claims (there is a pic of the office outing to Kanchanaburi and all). He seems a bit Hi-So actually, he even does that thing that a lot of middle class Thais seem to do of going out to some restaurant place and taking pictures of the meal, and the dessert. Dont see the fascination myself

So that can be an indication.

And if you go out with him and it doesnt work out, you might have the chance to be introduced to some of his friends, a link for a later night out (I know a guy who went out 18 months with a guy he met whilst out on a date with another guy he met online, the guy he ended up going out with was an old aquintance of the first guy who came up to the table in the disco where my friend and the first guy was with some friends and slipped him his number on the pretext of coming over to say hello to the internet guy. Not very nice perhaps but it shows how your chances can improve once you have your "foot in the door" as regards making contacts)

If you want to see a more up-to-date version of the streets for comparison, go to this site:

http://streetviewpattaya.com

It is a site owned by a guy who drives around Pattaya on his motorbike filming the streets.

The picture quality isnt great (slightly worse than the 87 video if anything!) but it makes for an interesting comparison.

People might find this Youtube video interesting.

A German guy who was in Pattaya in 1987 took some video of drives around Pattaya. He took a drive up Pattaya Hill, then went down Pattayaland Soi 2, and along Second Road and into Soi 13.

If you were around then it is a trip down memory lane. And if like me you weren't it is still fascinating to see how the place has changed. Pattayaland Soi 2 seems is very quiet, few signs up, and Soi 13 was like a country lane!

Double post

Had a read of the blog.

It was interesting, but talking about "spooky", i have to admit that the fright-masks that you put over the pictures of you and your partner made the photos some of the creepiest I have ever seen in a blog!

Simon, out of curiosity, what is your first language?

You say you know four languages already..in what order did you learn tham?

Saw it.

Was quite an interesting look at the lives of hotel workers, although the attitude of wide-eyed horror the presenter displayed about everything got a bit grating at times.

The Full Mooon Party sequence trotted out all the usual cliches.

For those of you who did not get the Catherine Tate reference above:

Peekint said:

"think outing is akin to saying, "Hey, see that girl over there? She's a real slut. She gave five of my friends blow jobs." Or, "See that guy and girl? They act like they're acquaintances but they've been doing each other in secret for three months." Basically, it's telling a sexual rumor, in my opinion. Very seldom could it be looked on as a good thing to do except that people like to tell and receive gossip."

You are not comparing like with like there peekint, unless you are assuming that any suggestion that someone is gay is in itself a scurrilous accusation.

You talk about people that "like to tell and receive gossip" as if this is some deviant group, but in fact in EVERY social situation (in the Western World at least) chatting about ones fellows and their romantic and/or matrimonial situation is the norm, not deviant.

Imagine this situation:

A new guy (call him Jim) starts at work. You know him slightly already because he is dating you neighbour's daughter. A few days after he starts some people are chatting about (behind his back, but benignly). A co-worker asks "Is he dating anyone, does anybody know, or is he single?"

You say "Oh, I know the woman Jim is going out with. He has been going out with my neighbour's daughter for the last six months"

Would that exchange be regarded as scurrilous gossip?

I think most people would say not. This is seen as normal non-controversial information to be passing on about a person. (Now if you said "and I saw them screwing in the neighbour's back garden too! And the positions he took her in..." may be it would be seen as scurrilous! )

Now, change the scenario slightly:

Jim starts at your workplace. You know him slightly already because he is dating you neighbour's SON. A few days after he starts some people are chatting about (behind his back, but benignly). A co-worker asks "Is he dating anyone, does anybody know, or is he single?"

You say "Oh, I know the guy Jim is going out with. He has been going out with my neighbour's son for the last six months"

Would that revelation be regarded any differently?

Obviously in most cases it would. This is not because the information conveyed is any more intimate, but because we (gay and straight) have been brought up to think that homosexuality is a big guilty secret that must be hidden by the social device of the "closet."

And you have committed the grave sin of "outing" someone.

And if you admit to it on a gay web-board you will soon be descended on by a bunch of (particularly more middle-aged) queens clucking about "You have just outed that poor man. How very very dare you!" (subtle Catherine Tate reference there).

But just because we have been brought up to think that way by Western society (and perhaps in Thai society too?) just does not mean we have to unthinkingly accept it. Actually, I am not trying to make a very radical gay lib statement here. In this World where we live in there is much prejudice still, and people like Jim can benefit from the presumption of heterosexuality. Especially if perhaps the boss in his section is a bit of a bigot, maybe keeping mum about Jim would be in his best interests...

I dunno. It is hard to know in that situation where to decide between craven acceptance of society's homophobia and discretion.

Citigroup in trouble?

More bad news. This could be serious:

from the UK 'Telegraph'.

"Fears of more turmoil hitting global stock markets grew last night after it emerged that Citigroup, the world’s biggest bank, has called an emergency board meeting for this weekend amid fears of escalating bad debts.

Citigroup is seen as a bellwether for the health of the financial system but has been rocked in recent days over concerns that its exposure to America’s sub-prime mortgage crisis is bigger than previously thought. News of the board meeting came after the US stock market closed so investors could not react immediately.

There were concerns in New York that the Citigroup board meeting had been called to discuss the possibility of the bank writing off an increasing amount of bad debt. This could seriously hit its profits.

Citigroup’s shares have already slumped 25 per cent over the past three weeks after the bank wrote off $5·9 billion (£2·8 billion) worth of bad debts."

"Last month, high season remember, with no days off, my caddy had 21 rounds of golf x 180 baht = 3780 baht plus 5000 baht in tips = 8780 baht per month for a 31 day work month equals 283 baht per day. Beats planting rice? Sure but it is not the road to fame and fortune as some people seem to think."

How did he or she work for 31 days in the month if he or she only caddied 21 rounds?

I know nothing about golf but surely a round is completed in one day?

I see that Nok Air are operating out of Don Muang from March 25th.

A big pain fot international connections from now on!

But am i correct in thinking that Air Asia and One-to-Go are still based in Suvarnabhumi?

Some statistics....

Visiting prostitutes does seem quite a strong tradition among the Thai people in Thailand.

In a survey of "Never married men in Northern Thailand" in 1993 (from report in the journal 'Demography' Vol 30 (3),:

----34% of single university students had ever had heterosexual sex. Of these, 82% had at least once visited a prostitute,

----80% of single department store workers had ever had heterosexual sex. Of these, 74% had at least once visited a prostitute,

----90% of single soldiers had ever had heterosexual sex. Of these, a whopping 97% had at least once visited a prostitute,

----86% of single construction workers had ever had heterosexual sex. Of these, an equally whopping 98% had at least once visited a prostitute.

This suggests that using prostitution is quite ingrained in Thailand, and that visiting prostitutes is pretty much the norm for " blue collar" Thai male workers in particular.