Sawatdee

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Welcome to the new Sawatdee, Sawatdee Gay Thailand and the Sawatdee Network.

A great deal of what we began to accomplish today stems back to the Sawatdee Hopes and Dream thread that bucknaway started back in May, a post that that generated 3 pages of responses and nearly 2500 views. This is the next stage in our evolution to being more functional for you, the members and more attractive to new members.

I first came to Thailand twenty years ago, almost to the day. My first trip was in November and I recall the flooding that year in Bangkok, the straw palapas down on Jomtien Beach, the sound of gunfire along the border up in Mai Sae, Loi Krathong celebrations in Chiang Mai and the Vegetarian Festival in Phuket City.

I also remember my first trip to the bars, my first bar was My Way, one of the original bars in Bangkok off Rama IV near Suriwong. It was a tiny bar with polls for the boys to swing from…one knocked my first drink in Thailand, out of my hand. Twilight and the Barbierry were favorites of mine in Bangkok back then, as were the Ball Club, Nautilus in Pattaya, The Coffee Boy in Chiang Mai and the outdoor beer bars along the strip in Phuket.

Not only has Gay Thailand changed over the years, but so too has Sawatdee-Gay-Thailand the granddaddy of the Gay message boards. This transition is the next step in the evolution of this Board, your Sawatdee Gay Thailand and an introduction to the Sawatdee Network.

For the Board, the biggest change is the move to a new domain, in our efforts around bans and proxy servers for the members in Thailand and especially those trying to access the site through the Thai provider, True. You can still access Sawatdee through Sawatdee-Gay-Thailand.com or you can log in through SawatdeeNetwork.com. You will notice some changes with respect to the colour scheme and chances are we may adjust this over time to suite the Board’s current image.

In addition, we will make whatever upgrades given the current phpbb platform in an effort to provide as much posting control for you the member. In the future we may change platforms entirely or to change up certain portions. The important thing to note is that the changes that we are making here are the necessary first step in any good direction we plan to take this Board.

The next biggest thing you will notice with this upgrade is the new packaging, the WordPress plug-ins instead of the old portal page. This will enable us to create a magazine like cover page like this aimed at current content from Thailand, Asia and around the Globe.

It is our goal to showcase the best local gay media, to make Sawatdee more attractive but also to promote as much local content and member driven content through Sawatdee. We hope to build the best front page over time that bloggers and contributors will want to be a part of and that will lead visitors into the site where we’ll build on more of the resources tourists and residents can use while in Thailand.

No doubt future visitors will simply Google “Gay Thailand” and for many, their searches will lead them here. We not only want to keep them here, but we want to give them what they need to keep coming back. Whether it’s to soothe that “homesick for Thailand” feeling, or to gear up for the nest trip… we want this site to be the one where the traveling gay man comes to.

We hope that as we change and continue to evolve…that you are with us for the journey every step of the way. We’ll try as best as we can to let you know what we are doing, to be inclusive and to take the advice and recommendations from the membership for the future direction the Board. We also hope not to bore you too much with this stuff and to continue to stay on topic and to keep conversations about the directions we plan on taking to a minimum. I hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve accomplished so far and that you continue to support the Board simply by being here.

Surfcrest