[homintern]

For all those people who bitch about some of us here who post non-Pattaya-related threads in this gay Thailand forum, I think that gaythailand.com will prove an admirable home, judging by the threads to date

[Silom]

From everything I've ever read (and from the horse's mouth as well), the correct pronunciation of "PHUKET" is this: "POO-GET" (heavy accent on 2nd syllable).

Yes, but I wonder if the "G" in POO-GET is the Thai "gk" sound, which is halfway between a g and a k. You can pronouce it Pooget or Pooket and Thais will understand you but if you can manage Poo-gket even better.

[GayThailand]

Brad,

Thank you for the comments. I do not remember getting an e-mail from you about any corrections that needed to be made with Phuket. We are ALWAYS open to corrections on the City Guide sections or ANY other part of the site. We really do want input from you and others. The best way to achieve this is by e-mailing: gaythailand@gmail.com and I will get back with you ASAP. There is also a contact us link on the site menu bar and you can place any suggestions or corrections there. If you do this, you will find out that we respond to them all!

I am certainly guilty of not knowing Phuket as much as Pattaya or Bangkok. I spent about a month in Phuket in 2005 and I spent the majority of that time at the hotel Baan Yaan Dee and at night at My Way Bar. The website was not being built at the time of my visit and I spent a lot of time when I wrote the article trying to get things right in my head. I knew that I would make many mistakes with both Phuket and Chiang Mai. However, if you just send us an e-mail, we will make the corrections ASAP.

As far at 2006, I will spend a few weeks in Phuket and Chiang Mai during the first part of the year and perhaps even a few more times. I love both cities but I vacation there more that I live so my knowledge will never be as great as some other cities.

I will also admit that when we started the site that we had the programmers make it easy for others to post listings and reviews for establishments in each city. We posted many ourselves but had anticipated that others would quickly follow suit and create a larger database. This did not happen as fast as we anticipated and therefore the first part of 2006 will be visiting each city and add more information to the City Guide area ourselves.

We are a new site and there will be many problems with the site and with the structure we have put in place. If you have suggestions, we are open to them. E-mail us or contact us and let us make the site better. Thanks!

The GayThailand.com Staff

[Up2U]

"Yes, but I wonder if the "G" in POO-GET is the Thai "gk" sound, which is halfway between a g and a k.".....I'm a beginning Thai language student and you just threw me a curve. I've never heard of the "gk" sound. What letter in the Thai (or consonant cluster) alphabet is it? Smiles post is right-on. You can listen to the audio file at:

http://thai-language.com/id/139465

[Brad the Impala]

The implications of your various levels of membership, Free, Silver, Platinum etc, is that you intend this site to be a commercial enterprise. You also describe your site as "The Gay Thailand Information Source". I would have thought that either of these facts, and especially a combination of them, would have put the onus on you to have reasonably correct information about the third largest gay area in Thailand available when you started operations, particularly after all the prior and continuing hype on other Gay Thailand message boards.


You refer to the fact that you have not had an email from me pointing out your inaccuracies. It would be hard to know where to start. I suspect that the "GayThailand Staff" have rather more time on their hands than I do. Nevertheless my first inclination was to post some corrections on your message board, but finding I had to register first to give you updated information, I demurred.

Had the facts about Phuket, and this may apply to other City Guides too, come close to being accurate, I would be happy to point out an occasional inaccuracy by email to you, but in the circumstances of so much incorrect information, even down to the pronounciation of Phuket, I would just suggest that you do your homework first.

[Sen Yai]

Up2U, I think the middle consonant in 'Phuket' is Gor-gai, which is usually the first letter of the Thai 'alphabet' and therefore the first that we learn. I think it can be pronounced as a hard G, nearly a K.

I'm glad that Smiles raised the issue of the pronunciation guide to the word Phuket on Gay Thailand, as it was one of the first things I read on the site when it was launched, and agree that foo-ket is simply wrong! It's the sort of ignorant comment usually found on American Travelogue TV shows. Pretty much anyone who has ever been to Thailand would quickly learn the correct pronunciation. The word Phuket is derived from the Malay word Bukit, which means hill. I didn't want to whinge about this at the time, as there was quite a bit of mud being flung around and the new GayThailand site looked well designed and clearly has potential. I know the owners of the site have welcomed comment, but usually once one comment has been made, then a flood of further criticism follows! However, I think a new site, even with little content, needs to check that what there are saying is correct.

We saw the same thing with the GayRice site recently. Another ambitious project designed to be the portal to all things gay, not just in Thailand, but all of Asia! This site was similarly lacking in content, much of which had been copied from the telephone directory (Burger King listed as a gay venue in Koh Samui!)

We have become used to websites such as Dreadedned, Gaybutton, PattayaGay and Dragoncastle all run by genuine aficionado’s of the scene in Thailand, who have started up a web site (maybe as a hobby) to share their knowledge on line. These sites continue to be a valuable source of info to newbies and old hands alike....as long as they are maintained up to date! Now we have a new breed of web site in the form of Gay Thailand and GayRice that seem to be run by folks that see themselves primarily as 'internet entrepreneurs', and seem to think that they do not need to have much personal knowledge of gay life in LoS in order to set up the web site. We have been told that that knowledge can come from us, the readers of their site in the form of contributions and reviews, and then we can...erm....read it there again ourselves. Yeah, right!

There is, of course a huge amount of collective knowledge in the readership out there in cyberspace, a lot of which is freely shared on message boards, which in the last year or two has been primarily Sawatdee Forum. I think most folks will continue to be happy to share their knowledge in open forums, but whether we will be happy to hand over 'ownership' of this knowledge to these portal sites, to publish as their own, remains to be seen.

[homintern]

I would have thought that either of these facts, and especially a combination of them, would have put the onus on you to have reasonably correct information about the third largest gay area in Thailand available when you started operations, particularly after all the prior and continuing hype on other Gay Thailand message boards.

You must have missed the initial announcement over on Sawatdee, Brad. As I recall these are a couple of guys who once spent a month in Pattaya, fell in love with "Thailand" and haven't got over that first infatuation. Their site is a commercial venture, presumably to allow them to continue living in the Land of Smile at their subscribers' expense

And good luck to them! :lol:

[GayThailand]

but finding I had to register first to give you updated information, I demurred.

Brad, I am not sure how many sites let you post messages on their message board without registering, but I hope there are not too many of them. Most do require at least a confirmed e-mail address. There is not much more to our registration process than that. Regardless, I appreciate your constructive comments and I will work on the City Guides.

Gay Thailand and GayRice that seem to be run by folks that see themselves primarily as 'internet entrepreneurs', and seem to think that they do not need to have much personal knowledge of gay life in LoS in order to set up the web site.

Sen Yai, I spent over 200 nights in Thailand in 2004 and over 8 months in 2005 so I do have a little knowledge of the country. However, I have met guys who have been traveling to Thailand for over 30 years and I know they and many others who travel there often have much more information that we do. Unfortunately, most of my time there was not spent taking notes. I spent the majority of time in each city doing the same thing. :D I had a fantastic time and I still have great fun each day I spend in Thailand. However, from now on, I will focus more on taking notes than having fun. Don’t get me wrong, I will still have fun. I will just try to balance the two.

Their site is a commercial venture, presumably to allow them to continue living in the Land of Smile at their subscribers' expense

Hominterm, I will never be able to live in the Land of Smiles with revenue from the website. However, it is a fabulous idea. :D I just hope to be able to recoup the money for the servers each month. If we are able to accomplish that, I will be happy. BTW: I love your signature!

To all: Thanks so much to those who have e-mailed us with advice and suggestions. We really do appreciate the assistance and support. We now have over 400 registered users and hope to keep increasing these numbers in the coming year. :D

[Brad the Impala]

ALL NEW GAY FORUM WITH MINIMUM EDITING

Might want to revise that in view of the removal of two entire threads from the Gay Forum.

We are your home for all the information you need to know about Thailand,

In view of the inaccuracies already pointed out in just this thread, about just one of the main gay destinations in Thailand, you might want to be a little less dogmatic in your assertions, in view of the longstanding sites that have been providing information with greater accuracy for sometime..

I appear to be always criticising your site, but expectations were raised to high levels by your publicist, and by your own assertions see above. When called on this your response of "oh gosh we are just starting out, and we are really relying on all you guys to provide us with more accurate information" , just doesn't cut it for me. Frankly I find such disingenuousness antagonising.

[GayThailand]

I appear to be always criticising your site

You also appear to be visiting it often as well. Less than 30 minutes after I made a post, you responded here. Thanks so much for visiting so often. :)

[asianad]

Several days before this thread was started ,I posted re the city guide on GT
askinf about places we could not find and not on the gay-patong map

I would still like answers or has the city guide been updated

http://www.sawatdee-gay-thailand.com/fo ... php?t=6277

[Dick]

Let's not loose sight of the fact that Gay Thailand is a new website and seems to me to be making a positive effort to provide another medium for people like us. So it's not 100% perfect, but the management throughout, from what I read, are responding to constructive criticism. The tone is not dictatorial or authoritative, but conciliatory and well mannered. They're on a learning curve: I'm sure they would appreciate any help that those with superior local knowledge are able to offer when they inadvertantly get it wrong.
The Sawatdee Forum has long held a reputation for being helpful to others - should this be any different?

[wowpow]

I'll second that, Dick. I only wish that I could have posed the reply with such elegance and charm.

Reading between the lines I think that the guys there at Gaythailand are finding things a lot more onerous than expected. Please stay with it guys as we needa balance of at least two good general forums on Gay Thailand.

I think this also highlights Elephantspikes expertise and the degree of involvement in keeping this board working smoothly with lots of nice new facilities and toys in it's new home. Thank you!

[catawampuscat]

I remember hearing a story many years ago about two men who looked at a beautifully painted white wall with a tiny black dot..One man marveled at the beautiful paint job and the other only saw the black dot..
I butchered this story which I heard as a child but the point is some people only see the the imperfections and others enjoy the beauty of things..
The criticisms of several posters do seem to be pretty petty and the moderators very willing to admit errors and ask for assistance in improving areas where they admit they lack expertize..
I am suspicious that some may have their own agenda to attack this new site, perhaps competition, envy/jealousy, dislike of the moderators or maybe they just can't get past the black dot.....