Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

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Jun

Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by Jun »

I was rather sad to see hear Nicky's site is closed.

The maps used to be really useful. Of course, once we're familiar with the main bar areas of somewhere like Pattaya, it's not really necessary. However, if, for example going to Chiang Mai after a break of several years, some maps that show where the remaining bars are would be useful. Theoretically, google maps should cover that, but locations of places there can be unreliable & listings are incomplete.

Also, Nicky's site had some useful listings for gay hotels. For example, if you want a list of gay or gay friendly hotels in a lot of locations, it's as good as any site I know of. So I'm sad to see it go. Guess it's difficult to make this pay.

I have submitted quite a few corrections to Google for the Boyztown area. Most were adopted, but they still insist of showing some closed bars I asked them to remove. Also, I haven't completed the job.
I deleted a couple of closed locations in Hua Hin as well. That might at least save people some more walking.

Anyhow:

1 It might not matter much for Pattaya, but for those cities where the gay bars, hotels etc are dispersed & difficult to find, it would be very helpful if any of us visiting could update google maps, to help others. Please keep that in mind.

2 Are there any other good & up to date map sites around, specifically for gay bars & hotels ?

http://Travelgayasia.com seems to be reasonable, certainly for the Boyztown area. This uses google maps, although I haven't quite worked out how to save a location from their google map to mine, so I can navigate to it on the phone (obviously I don't need that for Pattaya, but it would be more useful in a city with dispersed bars).

Dreaded Ned is years out of date.
fountainhall

Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by fountainhall »

Jun wrote:So I'm sad to see it go. Guess it's difficult to make this pay
My understanding is that Nicky left Thailand and is now living elsewhere. It was not a question of profitability or otherwise.

I, too, am sad to see the site come to an end. The number of closings has increased in recent years with a smaller number of openings. Maintaining accurate up-to-date information must be getting much more difficult than it used to be. The free magazine Out in Thailand which died a couple of years ago had several maps with approximate locations of gay establishments in the main cities. But there were always complaints that Y bar or Z massage place was either not included or incorrectly positioned.

Travelgayasia tries - but you have to be aware that it is quite selective and the information is often not current and sometimes inaccurate. For example, in Bangkok it includes Soi Twilight, gives some general info but no detail about specific bars. Then it includes Tawan under Soi Twilight! A detailed description of G.O.D. is included but with the comment "temporarily closed". My understanding is G.O.D. has been closed for some months and is not going to open again. The sauna section is more accurate – no doubt because it has been updated by someone who actually has experienced them. This comment has at the end "Special thanks for updates to ChristianPFC".

On hotels, surprisingly it does not include several cheaper hotels frequently mentioned by posters on the chat rooms – the Inn Saladaeng, BBB Inn and Babylon Barracks. The Pinnacle is listed, but as a “mid-range” hotel in the same bracket as the Tawana on Silom which is vastly more expensive!

Inaccurate information is also to be found on the Taipei pages. It lists Chuan Tang hot spring but the management changed to an anti-gay policy almost two years ago. If you spend an hour getting out to the hot spring area, find Chuan Tang and get inside, you will no doubt be very disappointed - if not mad, because the much more gay Huang Ding hot spring is very close by. As one commentator states –
“I think the statement that Travelgayasia posted with the link to Chuan Tang Spa and saying its a gay popular hot spring has to be removed. This hot-spring no longer welcome gay.”
Another -
“Seriously, don't go there . . . Now most Taiwanese gay avoid this place.”
So why include it in the listings?

Although the site is improving, I get the impression that the people who run Travelgayasia just sit down, go through a few websites, flesh out the basic information and then come up with the listings. I realise it is very difficult to be anything like 100% accurate. But gay guys often depend on listings, as they did on Nicky's.
Jun

Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by Jun »

fountainhall wrote:Travelgayasia tries - but you have to be aware that it is quite selective and the information is often not current and sometimes inaccurate. For example, in Bangkok it includes Soi Twilight, gives some general info but no detail about specific bars.
I believe the important point is correctly listing all the dispersed bars, since these are hard to find & if they are not listed, how are we to know about them ?
For Soi Twilight, once we know where it is, a short walk up the street is enough to see where every bar is. So I don't mind too much if the detail is wrong there. Although this may well be an indication of more significant errors with the dispersed bars.

fountainhall wrote: This comment has at the end "Special thanks for updates to ChristianPFC".
Good for Christian. He seems to travel around a bit and as he's quite considerate, I hope he keeps on updating location data.
Particularly in the cities with only a couple of gay locations, which are hard to find.

Perhaps we should have some kind of informal understanding, where a few of us agree to submit corrections to a site, so there is some kind of resource. e.g. Google, or Travelgayasia

fountainhall wrote: On hotels, surprisingly it does not include several cheaper hotels frequently mentioned by posters on the chat rooms – the Inn Saladaeng, BBB Inn and Babylon Barracks. The Pinnacle is listed, but as a “mid-range” hotel in the same bracket as the Tawana on Silom which is vastly more expensive!
That's a familiar problem. Gay sites listing the more expensive hotels only.
fountainhall

Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by fountainhall »

Jun wrote:Perhaps we should have some kind of informal understanding, where a few of us agree to submit corrections to a site, so there is some kind of resource. e.g. Google, or Travelgayasia
I think this would be an excellent idea. However, the problem as always would be – who collates and checks it? As you’ll see below, there is another worldwide gay travel site that has got its Asia listings so dreadfully wrong despite writers allegedly having visited!
Jun wrote:That's a familiar problem. Gay sites listing the more expensive hotels only.
Not only listing the more expensive hotels, but getting vast quantities of gay information wrong. No, I am not exaggerating, particularly in respect of one site. Just over four years ago, in one of the chat rooms a poster recommended the site http://www.gaytravel.com. Since I travel a lot, I decided to check it out. First I looked at the Thailand listings. To say it was more than pathetic is an understatement. It had a report, allegedly from a contributor who had just returned from his first visit to Thailand. It listed only three hotels as gay friendly, all in the 5-star category. What he wrote about The Peninsula and The St. Regis was listed almost word for word from those hotel's websites!

He mentioned he'd been to a fantastic gay spa - but couldn’t remember the name! He mentioned Bangkok's temples and then said the best one to visit is the Tiger Temple! This happens to be far from Bangkok near Kanchanaburi. For nightlife he said everyone had to visit "Snow Cowboy" (sic). Absolutely no mention of Silom Soi 4, Tawan or Soi Twilight. He recommended the "fantastic" beaches in Phuket, but couldn't remember the name of the one by his hotel. He also said Chiang Mai was great, had a population of 2 million (that's the total for the Province, not the city!) and where the Chedi is the only 5-star hotel! Tell that to the Mandarin Oriental and the Four Seasons! He wrote about the lovely brunch he enjoyed on the Chedi’s patio. That hotel has never served brunch!! I checked!

Apart from the obvious fact that this contributor had never been to Thailand, what pissed me off is that this is quite a well-known gay travel site that garners advertising from several major hotel chains. So I wrote to the Editor, a man named Steve Rohrlick, pointing out all the errors and stating my view that the article was a con job. He wrote back –
Thank you for alerting us. Bryan just recently returned from two weeks in Thailand. Our intent is to help our community. We want to get it right . . . Thank you again for taking the time to write us.
I also wrote to the CEO of the publishing company, Michael Lamb. He replied –
You are not the only one who has expressed your disappointment.
No surprise there!
Rohrlick then wrote again a week or so later –
I assure you Bryan was there very recently, so I am very surprised that there could be such a disparity from his work and your observations. Can you verify what it is you are reading and where you found it?

We work hard to give our site visitors information they can utilize when planning their next trip
At that point, I gave up. It was clearly a total con job. Since then, the Bangkok section of that site has indeed been updated – but not by much. It lists only four hotels – all from the Chatrium chain. What about the gay scene? It now says this –
LGBT Scene in Bangkok
Bangkok is an extremely tolerant destination for Gays and Lesbians, as sexuality is an integrated part of their practice of Buddhism. Gay harassment is virtually unheard of, and Bangkok is often referred to as the gay capital of Asia. Whatever your scene, Bangkok has it. The gayborhood is centered in Silom, though there are gay-specific venues in Sukhumvit and down Khao San Road as well. Affordable and often over-the-top, a gay-centric visit to Bangkok will no doubt impress.
Apart from factual inaccuracies and generalisations, once again, no mention of Soi Twilight or Tawan, of Babylon and the other saunas, of massage recommendations etc. So I checked another city – Taipei. This is part of what it says on the opening page –
Fantastically safe for a city of 75 million people
What???? The island only has a population of 23.55 million and Taipei just 2.7 million. For nightlife it mentions only two small bars – Commander D and XL Cocktail bar. Not one mention of the annual Gay Pride Parade.

What about Tokyo? Well, it’s a bit more accurate and yet three of the most popular bars where westerners can meet Japanese, GB, Kinsmen and Arty Farty are not even listed. Nor are any hotels. Singapore fares as badly with just two bars listed, no saunas, no hotels . . .

And this garbage is from a site that has over 420 city listings!

Lastly, it contains a really odd link headed The Most Gay Friendly Cities Visited in the World. This was collated from the 2014 International Airports Arrivals worldwide. It contains the caveat, “Several cities have been omitted due to their unfriendly attitudes or lack of legal protection for LGBT citizens and travelers.” And yet having warned travellers about the anti-gay law in Singapore, how come Singapore appears on the list? The list is -

Miami
Phuket – huh?
Rome
Istanbul – huh?
New York City
Paris
London
Bangkok
Singapore – huh?
Hong Kong

Make of all that what you will!
Jun

Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by Jun »

It is possible to find any number of rubbishy gay guides. The type where some hustler plagiarises content or writes some utterly generic & uninformative rubbish, then they hope to make money out clicks onto booking.com or whatever.
I intend to carry on ignoring that type of site. Why waste your time ?

What I'm more interested in the best current gay info source. Where is it (for Asia) ? Since I shall ignore the useless ones.

If there are a couple of good contenders, but nothing is perfect, then it might make sense for some of us to pick a good site & update it based on our travels. Particularly for the more obscure difficult to find locations -like the only gay bar in a regional city etc.
Even if that's google maps.

If a handful of people start adding places, it starts to become useful.
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Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by Gaybutton »

While this board is not conducive to creating maps, if you folks wish to do it, I will be happy to devote a pinned topic to at least keeping an up-to-date listing of gay venues, including bars, gay and gay-friendly hotels, saunas, massages, etc. throughout Thailand. It would include the names, locations, GPS coordinates, brief description - whatever.

As long as you gentlemen keep it up to date yourselves, fine with me if you want to do it, but I will not personally take on the responsibility of keeping the listings up-to-date. I would be willing to keep the OP up-to-date by editing in any additions, corrections, openings, closings, etc. submitted by board members, but that's all I would be willing to take personal responsibility for.

If anyone wants to start such a topic, let me know and we'll do it. However, if the topic fails due to lack of interest or participation, I'll reserve the right to delete it.
fountainhall

Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by fountainhall »

Gaybutton wrote:While this board is not conducive to creating maps, if you folks wish to do it, I will be happy to devote a pinned topic to at least keeping an up-to-date listing of gay venues, including bars, gay and gay-friendly hotels, saunas, massages, etc. throughout Thailand. It would include the names, locations, GPS coordinates, brief description - whatever.

As long as you gentlemen keep it up to date yourselves, fine with me if you want to do it
This could be a very valuable resource, but as GB suggests it would need to be pretty comprehensive to be of value. In my view, this would need a few posters in at least Bangkok, Pattaya and Chiang Mai feeding fairly regular information.

You may not be aware that when the owner of gaythailand.com took over a few years ago, he made a valiant attempt to gather such information together. There are no maps, as far as I can see, but if you scroll down the home page you'll see a section on a purple background with a whole series of lists - Bangkok Bars, Bangkok Cabaret, Bangkok restaurants and so on with other sections for Chiang Mai, Patttaya, Hiua Hin, Koh Samui, and Phuket. Click on the listed establishment and this takes you to a thread in the forum with comments from posters dealing with the specific establishment.

It's a great idea. The problem is that after about 4 years the lists are getting more and more out of date. For example, Oho on Soi Sribumphen is still listed as a Bangkok restaurant even though it closed well over 3 years ago. Adonis, Aqua and Albury have all been 'dead' for some time but remain listed in the massage section. Many of the listed Chiang Mai establishments have closed. That said, much still remains factual, but unless lists are updated constantly effectively they become valueless. For his Out in Thailand lists/maps James Barnes frequently asked for updates, but still could not get his maps accurate. It is quite a big job. Hopefully some group may be interested in creating the first accurate listing.
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Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by Gaybutton »

fountainhall wrote:It is quite a big job. Hopefully some group may be interested in creating the first accurate listing.
It definitely would have to be a collaborative effort. It would not necessarily have to involve people who live there. It could also involve people who are simply there for a holiday or some other reason.

Also, there are other things besides venues in those cities, such as short-time hotels scattered throughout Thailand, out of the way places in towns and villages, cruising areas - whatever you can think of.

I would hope that those who can, would also provide GPS coordinates. Often these places are not easy to find and often even "how to get there" descriptions are perfectly clear to the poster, but not so clear to everyone else.

Again, I will be happy to host the topic, but I'm not going to take on any personal responsibility for keeping it up-to-date. I'll do what I can, but I'm not going to even think about trying to do much of it by myself.

However, so far I don't see anyone lining up to volunteer to participate in such an effort. Until I see some sincere willingness on the part of the board membership to help gather the information, there's not much point in starting such a topic.

If anyone does wish to participate in this effort, please post below so we at least have some idea as to how many are willing to provide information. It may not cover all of Thailand or everything available in the major cities, but at least we would know that whatever information is there at least is accurate.
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Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by Asia Traveler »

I would be willing to provide information but I am not much of a writer
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Re: Gay Maps -Nickys Site Closed

Post by Gaybutton »

Asia Traveler wrote:I would be willing to provide information but I am not much of a writer
All anyone can ask is do what you can.
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