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As the recent few weeks of rainbow flags everywhere has shown, Bangkok Gay Festival, Bangkok Pride and Pattaya Gay Festival are three very different organisations and have very different objectives but all three have achieved their objectives well and a lot of people have managed to have a lot of fun in the process!

Since its inception in 1999, Bangkok Gay Festival's objectives have been mainly related to AIDS awareness and prevention and its operation has been fairly grass roots, but its annual parades well and truly put Thailand on the gay festival map. They also showed that the time was ripe for a much more public airing of gay issues. Their parade this year, though more low key than in previous years, continues their efforts to improve the AIDS situation in Thailand.

The Bangkok Pride Coalition was formed last year to keep Thailand on the international gay map, to keep building community awareness of gay issues and to support local gay groups and other charities. Bangkok Pride 2002 last month was the culmination of a year of events and fund raising, and the coalition achieved a remarkable level of support and recognition from local business and community groups, the Thai government and international gay groups. An estimated 350,000 people were in Silom for the parade this year.

In Pattaya, the parade and final events for the year were held in conjunction with World AIDS Day, and not even some rain could dampen the spirits and generosity of the participants. The Pattaya Gay Festival had another spectacularly successful fund raising year, managing to raise more than 3.5 million Baht for local AIDS and other charities.

For details and pictures of all the festival events see the galleries here and the official Bangkok Gay Festival, Bangkok Pride, Pattaya Gay Festival and boxertravels web sites.

Starting things off for next year is the Phuket Gay Festival in February - see the gayphuket and gaypatong web sites for details.

Keep those cards and letters coming in.