The question has been asked before тАУ many times: is there really any need for a Board like this? We know the number of Boards has fallen in recent years and the variety of content on those which remain has narrowed. Overall figures for memberships and readership may be reasonable but the number of regular posters surely is not.

Topics not unnaturally centre on bars and boys, along with requests for info on accommodations, a few on travel issues and less than a handful on political and other issues. The Boards that remain are generally Pattaya-centric with some posts about Bangkok, yet little info occasionally on the rest of the country. Of course times inevitably change especially in the age of the internet, and people change too. Sadly two of the most interesting and informative individual sites - Shamelessmack and BangkokBois тАУ have long since disappeared. Christian manfully gives a wide variety of information in his own blog тАУ but generally it does appear that interest in obtaining information from internet sites is very much on the wane.

I sometimes have a look at the Singapore site Blowing Wind and am quite amazed at how different this is тАУ blowingwind.org. Discount the fact that almost all Singaporeans speak English and so language is not the barrier to such a site as it definitely is here in Thailand where an English language board will rarely attract other than a small number of native English speakers, most of them in the upper age range. Even though Blowing Wind has only 30,000 registered members it permits posting by non-members. Consequently there is a huge active readership and posting base along with a very wide range of topics. Looking at its statistics, as of 12 noon here today there had been 69 posts made within the previous hour! ThatтАЩs almost more than this board sees in one week! And this is the middle of the day when many readers would be working or taking lunch!

Discount, too, the fact that there are flamers and a fair amount of immaturity in the posts since the general age of the membership seems to me to be around 30 and so lots in the teens and 20s bracket, certainly way lower than any similar gay Thailand English board тАУ again for obvious reasons. But sift through the dross and there is quite a bit on that site that really does provide info on quite a number of issues other than just saunas and bars, as well as a wide-ranging TravellerтАЩs Hut section with 24 specific countries/cities as well as general discussion threads. As a regular traveller this has given me quite a number of extremely useful tips.

Blowing Wind does have some advertising and gay-related promotions, but it seems not many. How they run and finance the site, I have no idea. But it surely illustrates once again a point I have occasionally made over the years on this and another Board. Unless an internet site like this can obtain and keep a much larger membership, readership and contributor base, itтАЩs success will depend solely on one person тАУ the owner, and for how long he is prepared to put in the time and effort. Once the novelty or whatever wears off, itтАЩs likely to go down the tubes, sadly, just like those which have gone before.