#gulf of thailand

[henk-heijmans]

Cottonopolis, Gulf of Thailand (AI, artificial intelligence), 2023 - by Kaveh Najafian (1982), Iranian/Austrian

[inatungulates]

Irrawaddy dolphin Orcaella brevirostris

Observed by suebsa, CC BY-NC

[yotarosuite]

"Bryde's whale"

Fujifilm X-T5 / Tamron 150-500mm f5-6.7 photo by yotarosuite #thailand

at Gulf of Thailand, 14 July2024

[salsaworldtraveller]

Almost Silent Sunday - Surf Sounds

Hua Hin, Thailand

[wkaustubh]

Island Paradise: Phu Quoc's Beautiful Beaches and Resorts

Phu Quoc, nestled in the Gulf of Thailand, is emerging as a sought-after destination, renowned for hosting some of the best beach resorts in Vietnam. Its pristine beaches and luxurious resorts make it an ideal escape for those craving natural beauty and tranquility. Additionally, for those seeking vibrant experiences after the sun sets, Phu Quoc contributes significantly to the allure of Vietnam nightlife.

Natural Beauty of Phu Quoc

Pristine Beaches

Phu Quoc boasts renowned beaches like Long Beach and Ong Lang Beach, each offering clear waters and powdery white sand. The sunsets at Sao Beach are particularly breathtaking.

Diverse Landscapes

Surprising visitors, Phu Quoc showcases diverse landscapes. From the lush Phu Quoc National Park to the enchanting Suoi Tranh Waterfall, nature lovers find a haven.

Popular Resorts on the Island

Luxurious accommodations are scattered across the island. Intercontinental Phu Quoc Long Beach Resort stands out with beachfront villas, while Vinpearl Safari Phu Quoc provides a unique stay surrounded by wildlife.

Activities for Tourists

Water Sports and Activities

Phu Quoc caters to water enthusiasts with snorkeling, scuba diving, and kayaking, allowing exploration of vibrant marine life.

Cultural Experiences and Sightseeing

Immerse yourself in Phu Quoc's rich culture by visiting local markets and fishing villages. The Phu Quoc Prison Museum narrates the island's history.

Local Cuisine and Dining Options

Phu Quoc's culinary scene is a treat. Indulge in fish sauce, a local speciality, and savour fresh seafood at night markets. Don't miss the famous Phu Quoc pepper crab and banh mi.

Sustainable Tourism Initiatives

Committed to preservation, Phu Quoc actively promotes eco-friendly practices. From waste reduction to sustainable tourism projects, the island strives for responsible tourism.

Accommodation Tips and Recommendations

Choosing accommodation is crucial. From luxury resorts to budget-friendly hostels, Phu Quoc caters to varied preferences and budgets.

Hidden Gems and Lesser-Known Attractions

Explore off-the-beaten-path locations like Ganh Dau Cape and Hon Dam Ngang Island. Uncover the untouched beauty of Khem Beach.

Travel Tips for a Smooth Experience

Packing Essentials

Sunscreen, light clothing, and a reusable water bottle are essentials. Don't forget insect repellent for nature excursions.

Local Customs and Etiquette

Respect local culture. Dress modestly at temples, and remove shoes before entering homes.

Nightlife and Entertainment

As the sun sets, Phu Quoc's vibrant nightlife unfolds. Enjoy beachside cocktails, live music, and fire shows at popular spots like Rory's Beach Bar.

Shopping Opportunities on the Island

Explore local markets like Duong Dong Night Market for unique souvenirs. Handcrafted items, traditional garments, and local spices make for perfect gifts.

Weather and Best Times to Visit

Phu Quoc experiences a tropical climate. The dry season (November to April) is ideal for beach lovers, while the wet season (May to October) brings lush greenery.

Transportation Options

Getting around Phu Quoc is easy with taxis, motorbike rentals, and tour services. Plan transportation in advance for a hassle-free experience.

Wellness and Spa Experiences

Unwind with rejuvenating spa treatments at resorts like Salinda Spa. Phu Quoc offers a tranquil setting for wellness retreats and self-care.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Phu Quoc captivates with its beauty, diverse activities, and commitment to sustainability. Whether seeking relaxation, cultural exploration, or adventure, Phu Quoc offers it all. Plan your escape to this island paradise for an unforgettable experience.

[rhk111sblog]

China and Thailand are planning to build a Canal that will cut across Thailand and allow Ships to bypass the Malacca Strait

[hungrytravellers]

From Kampot to Kep: Discovering A Seafood Heaven

[gemistar-888]

War Wanarat,Yin Anan Wong, Prom Ratchapat, Gulf Kanawut

[mileapo]

200324 - Apo's Instagram Story Update

[brightwin-biblebuild]

başkası yazmalı…

[mymilovesfashion]

[2023 year in review ~ Harper's Bazaar Thailand #2]

JUL - Miriam Sornprommas

JUL (digital) - Bright Nachirawit

AUG - Maylada Susri

SEP - Doja Cat, Nychaa

SEP (digital) - Arina Maksimova, Thanaerg, Phuwin Tangsakyuen, Violette Wautier

FALL (men) - Gulf Kanawut

OCT - Urassaya Sperbund

OCT (digital) - Tia Lee

WINTER (men) - Mark Tuan, Tawan Vihokratana, New Thitipoom

NOV - Valeria Buldini

NOV (digital) - Minji (NewJeans)

DEC - Jorin, Kimberley Anne Woltemas

DEC (digital) - Pat

[inatungulates]

Irrawaddy dolphin Orcaella brevirostris

Observed by biom, CC BY-NC

[thethera-rossa]

[kakakqowqoqom]

🌻My favorite duo 🌻

[starryalpacasstuff]

The Absence of India in Discussions on Queer Asian Media

So, yesterday @lurkingshan tagged me in an ask she got from @impala124 about the absence of India when we're talking about queer Asian media. I was intially just going to reblog it with my thought, but as it kept growing I figured it'd be best to just make my own post. Please read the ask linked above first so this makes sense.

*cracks knuckles* this is going to be the most fun I've had writing a post in ages. (For a little background, I'm a queer Indian, born and raised)

So, this is a very interesting question on a subject I've been rotating in my head for the past several months. There's a lot of different variables that contribute to the noticeable lack of discussion on Indian and South Asian queer media in general, so I'm just going to talk through the ones I've noticed a little randomly.

Talking about Asian media in general, it's well known that the mass popularity of kpop and anime has contributed massively to the increase in popularity of Asian media. If you've been in the Asian media fandom for any amount of time at all, you'll have noticed that media from Korea, Japan, and China gets by far the most attention from international audiences; all East Asian countries. There may be several reasons for this, but in particular, it's no secret that the fetishization of East Asians is a massive proponent in the popularity of media from these countries, while there's no such interest in South Asians. If we shift our focus to queer media specifically, media from these three countries is still extremely popular, with the addition of Thailand and the Philippines to some extent; both South East Asian countries. From what I've seen, there's very little international interest in media from South Asian countries (although, if we're talking about India specifically, I can't exactly say anything. Bollywood has not been good lately). If we talk about queer South Asian media, the scope of interest falls even further. If you'll notice, MyDramaList, one of the most commonly used websites for finding and tracking Asian shows only allows for East and South-East Asian shows. So, that's one reason—there's just not much international interest in Indian media in general. As Shan said in the initial post, it's partially because of a difference in priorities. Korea is notorious for using media to gain global standing, the role of the 'soft power' of Thai bls in the recent bills for equal marriage in Thailand has been widely discussed, the list goes on. Could racism also play a part in the massive gulf of interest in media from East Asian versus South Asian countries? Probably. But I'm not going to get into that too much.

Moving on, there's obviously a massive lack of queer media in India. I think this is greatly exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to support the people making queer media beyond buying and/or streaming their work. The majority of people engaging with Indian queer media are queer Indians, and a lot of us have to do so in secret because of the society we live in. This means that creators that have to push through several obstacles to publish their work often receive little incentive to continue doing so because of the lack of engagement. Because of the lack of media, international fans are less likely to become interested in queer Indian media, and the cycle continues.

I will say though, contrary to what Shan said, I think Indian media, particularly anything that came out post 2019 might actually be on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to access. This may simply be bias, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen, a lot of queer Indian shows are in fact available on streaming sites, and at most you'd need a vpn to access them. I think the two main things that actually hold back queer Indian media from becoming more popular are a lack of noise and it's relatively lower quality.

The main way we find out about new shows in this space is through either word of mouth (well actually, post) or because we follow production houses known for producing media. Because of the sparse nature of both the media and the consumers, there's very few people who learn enough about the media to want to give it a shot. For example, there's a film on netflix called Badhaai Do (hindi for Congratulate Us) that I've been meaning to watch for a while. It centers around a lavender marriage and I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I was slightly surprised to see that most of the people on tumblr I interact with who have been engaging with queer media for far longer than me had never heard of it. There's also a, Indian BL from 2017 called Romil and Jugal that I've written about before here, and I would've never learned of it's existence if not for a friend hearing about it from another friend of hers.

Because there's so little queer indian media, it's natural that the quality leaves much to be desired. The main issue is, because the queer asian media market has become so saturated lately people are becoming a lot more selective with what they watch, and for good reason. This means that queer media from india is simply unable to grow and improve over time, leaving it stagnant. Back in 2016-2018, the overall dearth of queer media from Asia meant that a lot of people were willing to watch shows that were average or even worse. Thailand particularly seems to have benefitted from this, being able to grow and evolve its queer media due to the successes of shows like SOTUS, 2gehter, TharnType and more even recently, KinnPorsche. Queer Indian media will have a much, much harder time with this because of all of the factors I've talked about and more, meaning that it is much harder for queer media to evolve. Honestly, though I haven't been able to watch/read much queer media from India, the stuff I have seen is really quite decent, it's just that it tends to fail in comparison to some of the brilliant stuff we're seeing from other countries. A while a ago, I bought four queer books by Indian authors, and of the three I've read so far, I'd genuinely recommend two, albeit one with quite a few reservations (I'll be writing about them sometime in the future, just haven't found the time yet). While talking about this with @neuroticbookworm, she brought up the excellent point of how Indian media in general has just been of fairly poor quality lately. It seems to me that a lot of it is catered to more conservative audiences, which results in people like me becoming disillusioned with Indian media and simply moving onto things from other countries. It has been a long time since I've watched anything worthwhile come out of Bollywood. So, it becomes even harder for queer Indian shows to be found at all; a majority of their target audience has already forsaken Indian media as a lost cause.

So, those are a bunch of reasons because of which there's not a lot of discussion about queer Indian media in fandom spaces like Tumblr. Something else I'd like to point out is, it's very hard for queer shows in India to gain much traction whatsoever. Live television slots are ruled by the infamous Indian serials, the majority of the audience being people in their late thirties and older, particularly women. And while homophobia is just as prevalent amongst the youth of India as it is amongst older generations, younger people are far more likely to be engaging with queer media, in India at least. This means that it would be near impossible for queer shows to air on live television the way they do in countries like Thailand and Japan. The majority of Indian youth use global streaming services to watch shows, hence the greater concentration of queer shows on service platforms. (Romil and Jugal is something of a dark horse here—I don't believe it was ever aired, but it was produced by a producer who has a few decently popular serials under her belt and is available on an Indian steaming service—another reason I'm determined to research how tf this show ever came into existence) If we talk of movies, the industry is limited by the iron fist of Bollywood, another reason it's very hard for queer movies to be produced and why they're generally found on streaming sites.

There's just not a lot of people who have the balls it would take to make a queer Indian show/movie and push it to the Indian public beyond a streaming service. I mean, we're all seeing what's happening with the Love in The Big City drama right now, and believe me, public backlash in India would be the same, if not much worse. And if no one in India is watching these shows, why would anyone in any other part of the world? There's barely any public figures that would be willing to participate in such a project, so queer media stays underground. Currently, Karan Johar is the most popular—and one of the only—out celebrities in Bollywood, and, well, he's treated as something of a laughing stock by the public. He has one or two queer adjacent shows under his belt as a producer, but once again, they're barely known and available only on Netflix. There was a movie called Dostana in which he played a straight guy pretending to be gay but, well, that speaks for itself. And well, I can't exactly blame him for it, knowing how the Indian entertainment industry is.

To talk a little more about the specific comparison between India and Korea, I think you're fairly accurate in saying that the two countries seem to be roughly on par in terms of homophobia, although that's an extremely vague statement that's rather hard to either prove or disprove. While the difference in international attention towards Korean and Indian media is certainly a major component of the difference in discussion about the queer media from these countries, there's obviously other things that go into it as well. There's this video I watched some time ago on the progression of queer representation in K-dramas that's quite well researched. It's an hour and a half long, so in case you don't have the time to watch it (though I do recommend it), it basically talks about some of the dramas with queer rep that have aired on Korean television and their impact. While it's hard to gauge the level of impact of these shows on the availability of bls and gls in Korea, they certainly had an effect, if only telling the queer population of Korea that they are seen and heard. To my knowledge (although I may be mistaken), no such queer rep has ever aired on Indian television, meaning that there's nothing to push creators to put queer media out there. There have been old movies and shows that depict queerness, but none of them ever reached the sort of the scale where they may have some sort of impact on the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the widespread popularity of K-dramas (and k-pop) does make it easier for creators to make queer media since there's a much higher chance of the shows being successful thanks to the international audience. Bringing back Love In The Big City, the success of the book abroad and the high probability of the show being well received internationally is probably one of the reasons it was able to be produced amongst domestic backlash.

Now, I've been talking a lot about how it's difficult for queer Indian media to gain any sort of international recognition with domestic attention. However, it's not necessarily the case. Here's where I start rambling (I say, as if this post isn't verging on 2k words). It's been proven that the presence of the international market allows for greater creative freedom in spaces beyond television. The best example comes from Korea's very own 'soft power'; K-pop. There's a K-pop group called Dreamcatcher that debuted in 2017 with a rock sound and horror concept that was extremely rare in kpop at the time. They succeeded mainly by focusing most of their promotions to the foreign market, knowing that their concept would not be well liked in Korea. And they succeeded. Today, Dreamcatcher has a sizeable fandom and has even been growing in popularity in Korea, with the Korean public warming up to their genre and having influenced other girl groups to try out similar sounds. We've already talked about the lack of international attention for Indian media, but there's also the issue that the producers of queer Indian media aren't marketing to foreign audiences, which remain ignorant.

That's all I have, this is so long good lord. All in all, there's a bunch of factors that feed into each other creating a cycle which means that, unless there's a break somewhere, queer Indian media will remain unrecognized. I'm excited to see what other people have to say, because this is a topic close to my heart and I'd definitely enjoy seeing more discussions around it.

[bengiyo]

Love Sea: Tongrak is Kind of an Asshole, and I Like It

I watched this yesterday with some friends, so my Stray Thoughts were a little scattered because we were talking about BL conventions, Thailand's tourism goals, and who MAME was. Now, with some time to think, I wanna talk about my favorite thing: Tongrak is a rich asshole. I love this for Fort and Peat.

He Looks Down on People Poorer Than Him

We open with Tongrak dressed inappropriately for his trip and the weather, whining on his phone, just to show his disdain for even being sent on this vacation.

Then when he first arrives on the island, he looks around at people enjoying themselves and a sign they dedicated to their home reading "Heaven on Earth" and immediately called it hell. This is these people's home! He is a guest! I deal with this show in my home city all the time. Be respectful!

Next, the first thing he does is start shouting at Mahasamut about the motorcycle and his luggage. He doesn't slow down to ask if Mut can speak the central dialect, or if there are alternative modes of transport. Instead he just screams at the man and then starts talking shit in front of him like he can't understand what is being said. I give Americans shit for doing this in other countries, and I give northerners shit for acting like they can't understand our accents down here along the Gulf.

He was rude about that bar, too. He went there for attention, and got pissed at the idea that people there might be into Mut more.tjsn him. He then stormed off without paying for his drink!

This man is so stubborn and petty that he literally just starts sending him thousands of baht instead of just asking him to speak in the same dialect as him. I'm totally with Mut on not speaking to him nicely until Tongrak did it first. What's so wild about this scene is that it's text that Rak is mad that his condescension is having no effect.

Mahasamut is Responding to Tongrak's Energy

Mut is just responding to what Rak is giving him, and is doing everyone a favor by bearing the brunt of this spoiled man's fits. He was even kind enough to let this man know right away that he could understand him.

The big thing for me is he can see when Rak is trying to get one over on him and turns that around. Rak tried to play like he had the upper hand sexually and felt played. He tried to play about being full and got played.

We see that the people of the island admire Tongrak, and he's involved in their lives. He's clearly playing a role here that Rak's friends hired him to play to help their cranky friend relax and finish his book.

I also like that Mut has made it clearly he is down to fuck with Rak whether he pays for it or not, because Rak is trying to hook up with someone for inspiration for his novel. I like that he removed the wealth component there, because it's clear Rak is used to throwing money at all of his problems.

Finally, Mut stopped immediately when he realized he'd actually scared and upset Rak. He doesn't actually want to hurt this man.

Why This Rocks for Peat and Fort

These two found a good rhythm in Love in the Air. They're good at this form of asymmetric bickering and flirtation. However, this time Peat gets to play the older, richer character. It's fun for me, because I think there's going to be a bunch of transference from LITA that covers how much of a jerk Rak is being to others.

I am glad that these two aren't reprising the same characters, and are being given a reasonable way to take advantage of their existing dynamic and tools. It's interesting that these guys can tap into similar beats without it feeling like the same characters.

On the Colorism

I see it, and it's there. However, I don't think MAME is an outlier in using it in her shows. There's a really rough sequence in Fish Upon The Sky (with Neo no less) that comes to mind immediately. I also just think that the skin tone stuff seems built in to a lot of the works we encounter (especially considering that some of these guys are literally brand ambassadors for skin lightening products or clinics). I think there's something to say about the way Mut is teasing Rak with a country bumpkin bit that could almost be read as race play, and there's maybe something to unpack there with far more nuance than I think we normally bring to BL.

But hey, while I have you here, now's a good time to say that if we want to tackle how race affects the queer experience, For The Boys is right there!