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As Phuket gears up for its 2004 gay pride festival at the end of January Bangkok and Pattaya have already begun planning for their 2004 gay festival events later this year and everyone else is gearing up for Chinese New Year. Meanwhile it is local politics at its best with a proposal for condoms for everyone entering the country (but still not for everyone entering gay saunas) and a (possibly only temporary) reprieve from the threatened 10:00PM closing time for all entertainment venues!

The Phuket Gay Festival kicks off on Thursday 29 January with the usual opening street party in the Paradise complex. On Friday there are boat trips, volleyball and the festival banquet at Sea Haag Restaurant (featuring yours truly as one of the guest speakers!). Saturday the volleyball continues, there is another boat trip and the volleyball awards that evening. Sunday is the parade along Beach Rd and Soi Bangla to the Paradise complex where the party continues all night. The festival is always a popular time in Phuket, so get down there if you can! Full details are in the calendar here and on the official Phuket Gay Festival website.

Meanwhile in Bangkok and Pattaya planning is already underway for this year. The 2004 Pattaya Gay Festival committee has set their goal for the year to be to raise at least 2.4 million Baht for HEARTT 2000 and their calendar is already full of fundraising events - see the news and calendar here and the Pattaya Gay Festival website.

The Bangkok Pride Coalition held its AGM last week, and its first planning meeting is scheduled for 31 January at 2:00 PM at Telephone Pub in Silom Soi 4 - come along if you want to help make Bangkok Pride 2004 a success - for more details see the news and calendar here and the Bangkok Pride website.

Never ones to pass up an opportunity to celebrate (despite what the new social order campaigners might want us to believe), Thais celebrate Chinese New Year with as much enthusiasm as they have for Thai New Year (Songkran) and western New Year! Most venues around town have the decorations organised already, Babylon of course has a foam party, and wearing red underwear over Chinese New Year is supposed to bring you financial luck for the year!

Speaking of the new social order, while a condom in your locker at a gay sauna is still a contentious issue, well-known NGO head Senator Meechai Viravaidya (of Cabbages and Condoms fame) has suggested that immigration officials at Bangkok International Airport hand out free condoms to all arrivals in the country during the World Aids Conference in July. When the senator has that one approved he might like to devote some of his time to condom use in the gay community!

If media circus is more your style, the live TV broadcast of the Thai Rak Thai cabinet meeting last week was a real gem. The item of most interest for "people like us" was the discussion of closing times for entertainment venues. Fortunately the decision on whether that should be 10 PM, midnight or later was referred to a committee for further investigation, and Thai committees are like committees everywhere, so a final decision may never be made!

While waiting for that decision there is lots more fun to be had - see the calendar for details of what else is coming up over the next few months and the directory listings for the latest venue changes!