whose festival is it anyway?
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
A few years ago there was little public celebration of gay lifestyles and not a lot of open discusison of AIDS in Thailand. Then in 1999 the Bangkok Gay Festival burst on the scene trying to raise AIDS awareness via soi parties and a street parade through the highly visable gay heartland of Bangkok - Silom and Suriwong.
Since then a lot has changed and "gay" has become a lot more visible. The BGF continues to focus on grassroots activities to increase AIDS awareness and of course the annual parade, but now groups like Bangkok Pride Coalition are actively working to develop a sense of gay community through events like Pink in the Park, and gay festivals have been organised in Pattaya and Phuket which focus on fundraising for charities and community building.
So whose festival it is?
Bangkok Metro covered the Bangkok festival/pride issue well:
Pride of Place - Bangkok Metro October 2001
Thai Guys tended to focus more on Bangkok Pride Coalition:
The Best So Far - Thai Guys November 2001
and ned's focused more on the parade:
BGF 2001 Report
The Nation did a good piece on gay issues, the festival and pride events:
Still in the Shadows - The Nation November 4 2001
but then ran a (I thought) rather disappointing piece the next day on the festival itself:
Bangkok's pink heart draws them in - The Nation November 5 2001
The Bangkok Post on the other hand excelled itself (NOT!) by only including a single picture with a mindless caption on page 2 on the Monday after the parade.
Meanwhile discussion on cruising for sex was fairly critical:
Parade - cfs thailand message board (link may become inactive after a weeks)
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