what ever happened to the gaylifeinthailand board ?

[Surfcrest]

Surfcrest, as I (think) I said - I'm not in the least interested in who Timmberty or Uncle Albert actually are, what I was asking (a little tongue-in-cheek) was what they called themselves on here whilst slagging us off elsewhere. Clearly you don't know, which is fair enough.

Sorry Scotty, I think I've been in a parallel universe lately or something.

It sounds as though this "Thomas" is reading Sawatdee, for whatever reason...whether that is somewhat related to this next business venture he's going to launch sometime this year? I'm not sure, perhaps we touched a nerve or something over there. I received two emails from them, which seem to indicate someone else is speaking on behalf of whatever was, gaylifeinthailand.com.

One thing they either never knew or were too stupid to piece together was that we had only been duped twice by Neal for two other new web sites that same year; cruisinggaythailand.com (that somehow ended up as Lonely Wombat's site (let's hope he didn't actually pay anything for it); and of course the pink Pattayabitchboard...which later became the pink Thailandbitchboard. When gaylifeinthailand.com entered the scene, Thomas introduced himself as this secretive guy who we didn't need to know about, someone with too much time on his hands... The whole story was suspicious in a very suspicious time.

I imagine if new (young) perspective members came by and saw his flashy site, they might join and start something up. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, because you need the guys that have had the experience to create the resource newbies come to read. Gaylifeinthailand needed to win people's trust over and they stuck to being secretive, in an environment dominated by Neal (at the time) and they simply couldn't survive like that.

Could it work again somehow? Well after this P.R. blunder, I wouldn't think so.

Surfcrest

[fountainhall]

Clearly we'll have to wait and see what is going to be on this much bigger (in terms of content) Board that will be aimed at "YOUNG people like me". One question, though, that surely has to be asked is: "Is there actually a market for any Board - gay or even just partly gay - specifically aimed at younger people who presently don't post on the existing Boards, the more so if it is to be in English? Various Boards at various times have tried to inject new younger blood into the posting pool and by and large with few notable exceptions - christianpfc take a bow - it hasn't worked.

When you look at other countries, Singapore has a very active gay chat Board in English with a membership that is almost exclusively in the 18 - 40 age group. It is far more wide ranging with vastly more daily posts than any of the main Thai English Boards. But that is to be expected as English is an official language in Singapore. I am sure there are plenty of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese sites in those countries in their native languages with younger members. I reckon also there must also be plenty of sites in Thai with loads of young contributors.

But that leads to another question: in the longer term can anyone succeed with any Board that is exclusively in English? Over the years I've posted on the three main ones and have rarely seen more than a core group of regulars. Are english-based internet chat Boards almost bound to fail here in this age of social networking and dating sites?

[christianpfc]

But that leads to another question: in the longer term can anyone succeed with any Board that is exclusively in English?

Absolutely! There are three active forums and two active blogs at the moment. English language is mother tongue of USA, most of Canada, UK and Ireland. While there are more Chinese speakers, native speakers of English have larger spending power. And educated people from all over the world can participate.

As a contrast, there is only one German language forum about gay Thailand that I know of: http://www.gay-reiseforum.de/forum/inde ... 9c5a48cd08 (the forum covers the whole world with a Thailand sub-forum with several posts per month (!)). I don't know of gay Thailand forums in other languages.

[Gaybutton]

I don't know of gay Thailand forums in other languages.

Are there any in Thai?

[Surfcrest]

I don't know of gay Thailand forums in other languages.

Are there any in Thai?

I believe there are two in Thai.

http://74.55.90.235/cgi-bin/CCforum/board.cgi

http://zaa.xq28.org/viewforum.php?f=...e41fbe0c7c02c2

Surfcrest

[dab69]

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Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

http://gaylifeinthailand.com/

[Nirish guy]

Oh well at least his / their Facebook page is still up ( albeit not updated since December 2103) just in case any "young" people might feel the urge to message him to show their support for his up and coming "big project".

However as I'm now 46 that's me obviously well out of the running for becoming a member now anyway as it seems seeing that I (and most others here and on all the boards I suspect) have been sumarily judged as being too old and useless to be able to have anything of interest or use to contribute about holidays, gay or otherwise and or living in Thailand, even though it's exactly that actual experience that is usually sought out on boards by others.

Wow, talk about shooting yourself in the foot and cutting yourself from off half of your prospective member base before you'd hardly even launched your ( failed) all new singing and all dancing web site ! On no wait, sorry I forget it wasn't his fault it didn't work out, it was all Smiles and Surf's fault - tut tut, see, theres that bloody gay mafia at work again, naughty boys the pair of you ! :-)

Oh well, hey ho, I'm sure I'll get over the massive disappointment of not being able to participate in his young persons experiment. :-)

http://www.facebook.com/GayLifeInThailand

[Smiles]

Nirish above refers ~ tongue in cheek ~ to the concept of a "Gay Mafia" conspiracy regarding the administration of Sawatdee, and the owner of 'GaylifeinThailand' uses the word 'cabal' to describe some kind of Inner Circle ... i.e. yet another conspiracy theory. So stupidly paranoid. So completely wrong.

So Herein a Short History of Sawatdee (the dates are partnered with the word 'around' because I simply forget the precise dates, so the best I can do is in yearly terms):

(1) 2002 ~ 2005 The message board known as 'Sawatdee' was started by myself 'around' late 2002, early 2003. It was named ~ all through my ownership ~ as Sawatdee Forum and began life as a 'Tree-style' Message board. That lasted a short time until I found a much better system called EZBoard, a visual style which lives on to this day. At the time Gaybutton had his board, as did PattayaGay. THe PattayaGay board was an excellent one, but by the beginning of 2003 Gay Pattaya had pretty-well had it and decided to shut it down. The news that that would happen soon was the main trigger which prodded me to start up a full-bore message board named Sawatdee Forum.
From 'around' late 2002 until 'around' late 2005 I was the sole owner and moderator, and stayed that way until I passed it over to Elephantspike 'around' late 2005.

(2) 2006 ~ 2012 Elephantspike took over the board (it was given to him, not sold.)
At that time Sawatdee Forum was very much like Gaybutton and PattayaGay ... none of which had any advertising. Elephantspike saw some potential in the board (it had greatly expanded it's membership since 2002) and went the 'add-route'. Sawatdee continued to get busier.
I continued on Sawatdee (now name-changed to Sawatdee Gay Thailand) for about a year as a Moderator (along with jinks) and helped Elephantspike with the technicalities of the old EZBoard. Some time later ElephantSpike ('Robert') changed message board hosts to the phpBBB system, and it remains that to this day. After I left as moderator, jinks stayed on ... and in fact did so almost until his death in 2014.
2006 was also the Year of Hedda (a nasty piece of work) and the Board Wars ... which I believe accounts for some of the 'conspiracy theories' which are still levelled at Gay Thailand message boards every so often: (see above introduction).

(3) 2012 ~ 2013 The lowest point in Sawatdee's history: Robert sold (?) the board to Neal. In hindsight, an almost disastrous accomplishment.
Jinks stayed on as moderator for as long as he could stomach it, and I believe that Scottish-Guy helped out with moderation as well ... but he also finished with Neal after putting up with much histrionics, back stabbing, and lying on the part of the new owner.
I quit Sawatdee completely for about 2 years vowing never to enter the cesspool Neal made of the board until he had (hopefully) passed Sawatdee onto someone else. So no more about that ghastly Interregnum.

(4) Early 2014 ~ to present Neal sells Sawatdee to Surfcrest and he begins a badly-needed renovation. Jinks returned as a moderator and I believe Surfcrest also had some tech support from a friend of his (of who's name I know not).
Sawatdee came though well enough, and continues on as the board which has been around continuously for the longest time of any of the boards. (Gaybutton has been around the longest as continuous owner, but his first board went into a long hiatus, then changed names, and now flourishes.)


So ~ and this is particularly aimed square at the owner of GaylifeinThailand ~ the 'cabals' and the 'conspiracies' regarding Sawatdee never happened. They are myths only, beloved of those who are gullible, paranoid and stupid enough to believe them.
From 2002 to the present Sawatdee has had 4 owner/Admins ... 1 long-term moderator ... and 2 short-term moderators.
Ah yes, what a nefarious cabal they make.

[Surfcrest]

(3) 2012 ~ 2013 The lowest point in Sawatdee's history: Robert sold (?) the board to Neal. In hindsight, an almost disastrous accomplishment.
Jinks stayed on as moderator for as long as he could stomach it, and I believe that Scottish-Guy helped out with moderation as well ... but he also finished with Neal after putting up with much histrionics, back stabbing, and lying on the part of the new owner.
I quit Sawatdee completely for about 2 years vowing never to enter the cesspool Neal made of the board until he had (hopefully) passed Sawatdee onto someone else. So no more about that ghastly Interregnum.

(4) Early 2014 ~ to present Neal sells Sawatdee to Surfcrest and he begins a badly-needed renovation. Jinks returned as a moderator and I believe Surfcrest also had some tech support from a friend of his (of who's name I know not).
Sawatdee came though well enough, and continues on as the board which has been around continuously for the longest time of any of the boards. (Gaybutton has been around the longest as continuous owner, but his first board went into a long hiatus, then changed names, and now flourishes.)

Thank you very much for remembering the history Smiles;

Just a small correction on the dates...

(3) May 2011 ~ 2013 May 2011 Elephantspike announces he's "Moving On". My understanding is that Elephantspike was in discussion with another member about buying Sawatdee, but for some reason the deal fell through. This opened up a bidding war between (Probably the best owner we never had) and the worse owner we actually did have. Neal tries to change the name from Sawatdee-Gay-Thailand to Sawatdee Gay Forum.

(4) May 2013 ~ to present Neal and I met down on the beach in March 2013 to discuss the terms for me to buy Sawatdee from him. On May 1st 2013 The deal to buy Sawatdee was complete. 5 days later I brought jinks back as our moderator and soon after that, Neal was gone. I changed the url from Sawatdee-Gay-Thailand to Sawatdee Network to get around the True ban in Thailand. Elephantspike technically is our engineer or tech, but he's taken a break from Sawatdee for about a year now. Prior to Elephantspike, "the best owner we never had" assisted jinks and I with the initial clean up and updates. He asked that his role remain anonymous and you might recall him as being Dante.

Surfcrest

[fountainhall]

At the time (around 2003) Gaybutton had his board . . .

This is merely out of curiosity. GB started his present board in mid 2010 after the owner Michael announced he was closing the gaythailand board. A couple of months or so later, he then announced it had been sold to someone who goes by the name of Scooby whom no-one seems to know or has ever seen. In the interim, quite a number of previous posters left gaythailand to join the new GB board and many of the regular posters never returned. I believe the gaythailand board started around 2004. Did GB have another board before then?