May 9th, 2006

Bangkok diary: Doctors on holiday

Chalerm was affectionate and happy on Monday too, and it was not even payday. He sat on my lap, danced and gave me a back rub.

How many hours a day can a Thai grandmother sleep? How about 16-18 hours? She goes to the bathroom (preferring the squat toilet I never use), she eats, she watches a little television and sleeps.

I had enough of Thai Internet censors. Now both Sawatdee Forum and Gaythailand.com are blocked, and this even as none of them contain any p*rn. The blacklist keeps growing and I run into the dreaded “Verboten!” page from the Ministry of Information more often. It was time to do something and I installed the TOR software that a reader of this blog recommended back in February.

The Ministry had blocked the site with the TOR software but I found copies somewhere else. I had been putting this off, thinking it was complicated and time-consuming, but it was a snap to install. The re-routing makes it slower, but I can disable it when I am surfing non-blocked sites.

It is alarming that a democracy like Thailand should join China and Vietnam in heavy-handed Internet censorship. But then again comrade Thaksin was never much of a democrat.

I haven’t heard anything more about Chalerm appearing more on television. Maybe his fame is fading. But he likes it and would say yes if anyone calls. I am not sure if this business with gay/ladyboys in the military is solved for good or not. When is anything solved for good in Thailand? There could be more rounds for all I know.

I am agonising over my planned trip to Farangland later this month. Where should I go, who should I visit, what appointments should I make with doctors and specialists, should I rent a car and for how long, what will the weather be like, and so on. Decisions decisions.

My friend Mac says I am welcome to stay in his apartment even as he is going to Spain to drink beer and cozy up to masculine German men. He even says I can use his Mercedes-Benz but I would rather not in case I wreck it.

Mac is long overdue to visit me in Bangkok but his fear of flying and his lack of interest in Thai boys means he is in no hurry. I say they have German men in Thailand too, even married doctors who are on holiday with wife and children since this is Mac’s speciality. Very funny, says Mac.

No Tags

3 Responses to “Bangkok diary: Doctors on holiday”

  1. Farang SG Says:

    “Chalerm was affectionate and happy on Monday too, and it was not even payday.”

    Ok, ok, I get your point. Heh.

    I really enjoy your blog. It’s really the only one I know that charts the ups and downs of a gay farang/thai relationship. I appreciate you letting us a peek into your life with Chalerm. However, I always wondered how you two met in the first place, and how the relationship evolved to the present stage. I haven’t read anything about that, even in the blog archives. Perhaps you might like to enlighten us one of these days?

  2. Silom Farang Says:

    The epic tale “How I Met My Boyfriend” was published about a year ago, but I took it down to edit it.

    “Once upon a time a farang saw a handsome Thai man smile at him in a park in Bangkok. It was Chalerm’s father”.

    I will have a look and put it up again.

  3. Anonymous Says:

    Glad my suggested Tor has solved some of your frustrations.

    An even neater solution may be Torpark, which is a pre-configured package of Portable Firefox and Tor. It is publicised as a means of unblockable browsing from a USB drive, but it works just the same when permanently installed on your hard disk.
    http://torpark.nfshost.com/

    It also addresses the ‘DNS leak’ issue if totally anonymous browsing is your aim (in addition to beating the Thai censors). Tor on its own requires the addition of Privoxy to achieve this.

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>



Calendar

September 2008
M T W T F S S
« Aug    
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930