YimSiam

Oh Flash, how quickly you forget! In the Land of Tons of Elephants, memory runs deep - what baan nok villager does not recall in his or her genes that dire day in December 1941... or the cruel wind that blew east from Burma in 1765 or thereabouts... and the Khmer will not soon forget the 13th-14th century humiliations! We must stay on guard, thinks that baan nok villager - we must stay on guard, with all the sleepless vigor of a Vietnamese looking northwards down the centuries for signs of new troubles heading south... There are imminent threats a plenty, my friend - just depends on your timeframe for 'imminence'... Too soon? YimSiam

Step-brother, step-father stuff popular, as Mekhong says ("Asian stepmother", anyone?), mother-daughter team servicing a guy. I have no problem there - but yeah, beyond that, completely creeps me out that that is in the top ranks of PH materials. Huge appetite for something really disturbing.

I have a hard time imagining that a locked-down version would make any sense - you'd be better off, or as well off, starting a new board with a locked-down vision, I feel like there's just not much appetite in the crowd here for something more restrictive - the motivation for the restricted approach is, I assume, for nude photos and stuff like that? That's not attractive to me - just seems to exploitative and it mars by preferred vision of what's going on with the girl scene in Thailand, I'd prefer to see it from a less warts-and-all approach... let me live with my delusions... plus, there's boards like that with monster membership already, not likely to give them a run for their money. I've had great times on this board over the years, really. I've tried out some of the others now and again (sorry KS!) but while they may have higher traffic and numbers, or more explicit content, they just have never offered me the value and interest that this one did in its prime, not even close.. TV... blech. Pattaya boards a bit too heavy on content-less content, just numbers of posts sometimes, without many folks who care to put in some thoughtful responses based on experience and care in the country and scene - not uniformly the case, but there's a lot of dross to get through to find the good stuff. I feel like my best years here, it was really a great forum for people to be working out some of the complexity and contradiction and unadulterated fun of the scene - I'm not sure I ever met anyone in flesh and blood from the board, at least not knowingly, but I certainly felt like a had a certain shared understanding, sympatico with a number of posters. Respected a number too, even if what we were posting about was sometimes ludicrous. I think the reality is regrettably that we benefited from riding the wave of a certain technology at a certain time, and hit a sweet spot that is unfortunately temporary. The market has matured, FB and Twitter and whatever else have found better ways to dominate and monetize our screen time, and the tendency has been to move as quickly as possible away from content and text in particular, towards clicks and images and high page turnover with associated ad-viewing etc. It was a good thing while it lasted, and maybe it will keep lasting a while a longer in a reduced form, or even as an archive and record of our sometimes-great times and talks, but it's not a question of tweaking this direction or that at this point... things have likely moved past the sweet spot we enjoyed. I wasn't ever a 'big player' on the board, but I somehow seem to have accumulated a couple thousand posts with my intermittent participation, and I had a lot of fun in the process. My absolute thanks to KS for that, and to the members who made it worthwhile and entertaining! I guess my preference would be to keep the board and archive of it up and available, aim to benefit from incremental improvements to search functions for those interested in looking into the past, and keep the forum open for continued involvement of those who choose to. I'd definitely feel a pang of regret and loss if it was to just disappear one day, all that time and thoughtfulness and humour disappeared into the ether... YimSiam

I resemble that remark...

Ten? Only ten? Whoever's doing the counting is clearly lying, incompetent, or drunk - I can count more than ten dinosaurs right here among board members alone! YimSiam😏

The number of people who kill themselves in LOS - or try to - by jumping from height in malls or at the airport is puzzling. Central Festival Pattaya is a regular spot, it seems to me from occasional news reports, and of course there's one every now and then at Suk. I don't get it - if you're going to do it, get yourself to a real highrise or condo building, and do it right. No need for a public spectacle. I suppose it might be a function of finances? For someone down on their luck - or facing the terrifying prospect of returning to their shitty homeland alone and broke and broken-hearted with no return trip to LOS planned - perhaps the Central Festival has the marked virtue of being free and easily accessible, and the airport just happens to be the place where reality really sets in - and opportunity presents itself. Also, free. The enduring topic of farang falling/jumping/pushed from height in Thailand: the wind blows, waves pound the sand, rivers run to the sea, the mountains turn to dust - and still, the farang will fall from the sky... eternal law of God, physics, and karma. It would not surprise me overly much if it turned out that Newton's discovery of gravity was not occasioned by an actually apple falling on his head, but rather by hearing a foreigner calling the Thai name "Apple (Appen)!" while plummeting to his death from a nearby condo. Newton in Thailand - back when it was all - well, almost all - quality tourists.

I am now at nearly 18 months since I've been in Thailand last - I think by far the longest stretch since my first visit in 1995. Looking to schedule a January 2020 trip, which brings it to almost TWO FUCKING YEARS! What happened... That means about 165 days to go, and yes, counting...

Electric or not, that is some impressive altitude for a bike! Fuck me. Must've been the unbuckled little plastic cap that saved the driver...

Just stick to some nice temple pics, maybe a beach and one of those ridiculous floating markets - Thailand's rep is bad enough. I mean, eventually someone's going to think that my 50 or 100 or however many otherwise-inexplicable trips are some kind of hedonistic foray into despicable P4P! And we can't have that...

God only knows what's in some of those pills down on Sukhumvit... Had a friend (yeah, yeah - really, a friend) take one of the Viagra-Kamagra pills and freak himself out by the hours-long painful erection, bounding fast heart rate, clammy hands etc and actually went to find a doctor at Adventist to make sure he was alright... No lasting damage apparently, just gave him a benzo for the anxiety and he sat it out, but I would think twice about popping one of those. Too bad the pharmacy regs have stiffened up (ha.) and you can't get what you'd like over the counter anymore - although even back when things were more flexible, there was a good chance even pharmacies might be hawking knock-offs - I'm thinking the one near the moto stand at Nana mouth.

Dead, eh? Some poor girl must be back on the streets, now that her gig wiping some fat dude's ass has been terminated... Bet she didn't look like the chained, bikini-clad Princess Leia, however - Jabba the Hutt had money, and I'm guessing this guy didn't have too much of it, traveling coach EVA at that size. I'm also a fan of the EVA flights - but would definitely spring for business for the long haul. I've generally been able to find decent deals time to time with them or China Airlines - something about being the airlines of a gray-area state keeps prices a little lower, perhaps. "Deeper, deeper!" Yikes. Gotta have respect for the folks that take care of those who can't or won't care for themselves.

It's the internet - one must pronounce dumbassedness at every possibly opportunity, I'm afraid, lest the powers that be cancel one's paypal account as punishment. Is there not a previous pam-like gf-like creature who might be willing to find some roses and deliver them on a promise of future repayment in full? Thai girls, they do enjoy a love story, I believe.

FFS, send the lady some money for a party with her friends. I realize it's your first or second time to Thailand, so you may entertain dumbass ideas like 'oooooh, roses!' or what-the-fuck-ever you are thinking. But just send her some money and tell her its for a party for her friends, or nappies for your kid, or a top-up on the lottery and be happy.

Could the ASEAN countries get together and agree to just sell one of the countries outright to China, on condition that the others are left alone? Or two, maybe three. Give China Cambodia, Singapore, and Brunei, and build the fucking wall(s)...

You're a lucky man, to be so easily amused. Cherish that capability, because when it's gone, it's gone.

If the best fence you can afford is barbed wire, you can't afford a horse. Mutatis mutandis on the Thai trips.

Transparency, really. Make sure things are open and transparent, and that its the country that benefits.

Gets harder and harder every year to get that elusive Boy Scouts knots badge, doesn't it?

For my 100 bucks, I'd go for something that is better value for money - but I can understand the desire to be right there, and sometimes a place just seems like the right place to be. The Prince? Now that's an unusual choice, but a nod to some earlier days. And better than the Prince Palace, the haunted bad-luck hotel...

But... aren't all Buddhists born again? During that time I recall cursing that name, oh Purachai you bastard, you've closed the bars again! And it was terrible, sure (albeit not as terrible as the season of the drug killings... early closing time more of an inconvenience than a wanton bloodletting) But the spirit was there somehow still, you could always find some place to party all night, even if it wound up the pavement at the mouth of soi 13 (which has not always been the African drug bazaar, boys and girls - it used to just be drunk farang and drunker thai chicks having a good time, no underlying tension, not even when the monks passed, and the skytrain started rolling again, or when the sidewalk filled with workers in the bright sun of morning, and me an Buriram Dao or Long-hair Lek and company would finish off the last of myriad beers, and finally grab that cab to the PB or penthouse hotel... Ah, but I digress. Purachai time sucked, but it was still fucking great. Plus, there was often some talk about the zone plans, and so somewhere some of the places would have been allowed to stay open. Come to think of it: I was working in Bangkok back then, normal hours - 9 to 9 or later usually. It's probably a good thing that during that period, I would have often been encouraged to go home with the closing of the bars - or I would have missed even more work that I did, and might not have used that job as the springboard to the career I'm still working in. Maybe Purachai saved me, who knows. But I still detested those two smug lifeless dudes playing out their cynical bullshit - T and P... enemy mine... (eventually came around to appreciate Richy Rich Squarehead as a symbol, but as a dude, no.

Alright, just skipped through a bit of it - subconsciously willing the footage back to 2001-2006, even a bit after - the (for me) glory years of Nana carpark, the freelancer scene... but that ain't it, that's the unpleasant anxiety of current-day Bangkok - all dressed up but no fun around, just the bare bones of what once was. I suppose everyone thinks their time was the prime, of sorts - I know the 98-07 period can't compare to what must have been a special magic 20 and 30 and 60 years before... but as far as fun wild good times with the girls, the early oughts was pretty damn good. Beer bars here and there throughout lower Suk, things pretty wild and free, still that palpable sense in the girls that sure they'll go along for the ride, because that's what they do, but earnestly. Goddamn but didn't I fuck myself up by setting myself up to spend first summers then years in that environment - when that's your weekend all year long and you're a young guy with a job you love and nothing to tie you down, and you'd rather be lo-so in the gutter than hi-so in the clouds - what could be better than drinking your way through those nights, eventually learning your way along the wooden boards laid across the muddy paths of this 3 am warren or that dawn-light slum... It's like I was throwing myself down a hill, but the damn hill wasn't steep enough for one good fall, I just kept getting up and throwing myself down again a bit more, a bit more. Not sure whether it's the lucky ones or the not so lucky, but I guess most guys either run off home and get started on the life that's been waitng for them while they sewed their wild oats etc, or some guys find the girl that's the one he goes in deep for, gets married, changes the story line, reaches something of an ending in the Choose Your Own Thai Adventure series... Not me, oh no! I resisted - like a fucking donkey, I resisted. No return home to real life, no deepening the Thai life with one true love and etc etc. But no, I persisted. Just kept coming back - even right to that Nana Hotel sign, I was there last week, and I was there 17 years ago - sometimes it got a little bit deeper, those girls who just wouldn't leave the room, somehow found themselves my girlfriend for some months or so, til it was back to the well for someone new. It got deeper, sometimes, sometimes because she was an angel I couldn't let go, or just because we fit for a while - but mostly it was light, it was just fun, light and fun and stupid and I just drank my incredulous way through it, marveling at the detail, and most always delighted with whoever it was in that taxi on the way home - at midnight, at four, at ten, at two in the afternoon. Didn't take too long for things to get darker - once you spend a little time on the underbelly of the underbelly, it's not so easy to come back into the light - and if you do, it doesn't look quite the same anymore, though you wish it did. I still keep going back. I suppose I'm hoping those crazy days will come flashing back, a sudden surprise, but that's not what happens. Mid-forties now, spent the last twenty years away from 'home', country after country about every two years, it goes and goes. But weirdly, it's just now that I am suddenly feeling the acute sense that yes, actually things do change, and when they die they never come back, what you had before, it's gone forever - you're a fool to look, a fool to think that was something other than ephemeral - it's there in your lost memories, and those Isaan girls with their capacity for names, faces and memories - somewhere there's girls turned to old ladies who yes, might remember this or that adventure, kindness, disappointment. But mostly - it's just gone. That's how things work, which I know, of course - but fuck me, if it isn't somehow hitting me hard on this particular account, the transitory nature of life: my rock, my beacon, has been the freelance late-night girls of Bangkok - even for the Hong Kong years, it was always them... but it's gone. Huh. YimSiam

Just spent some days in Bkk and Pattaya - was struck by the number of falang that I noticed had a palpably creepy vibe - the kind who would tape these girls clandestinely, obsessively - but especially the dudes who seem totally engrossed in watching a shower or lesbian shower, mouth-breathing, endless staring. Feels like there's some weird ones here...

Sir Charly, Bakwaan, Nasiadai: I encourage you most earnestly to reconsider your decision. Allow your ID and posts to remain, and if possible, keep producing more! We enjoy your perspective, your enthusiasm, and your candor. YimSiam

Guess with everything else pretty much perfect in the country, this law was the only thing left to improve...