I have to admit rather than being my normal cynical self when I heard the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) was rolling out a new website to attract gay travellers to the Kingdom, I had high hopes. Thailand has always been welcoming to its gay visitors. That the powers that be would go out of their way to attract pink dollars sounded like a good thing. That there would be a one-stop site on the web to clue newbies into everything Thailand has to offer gay travellers sounded like an idea whose time had come. And make no mistake about it: TAT wants gay travellers to come to the Kingdom. They just aren’t interested in them cumming once there.

Rather than risk the cultural and linguistic errors that producing a gay travel site for Thailand would encompass had it been done within the country, TAT handed their job off to their New York office. Who in turn, evidently, turned the job over to professional travel agents. Travel agents only make money when people book their air fare, hotel, and outings through an agent. And travel agents make more money when those customers spend big bucks. So the official TAT site is not so much for People Like Us as it is about lining the coffers of gay travel agents.

TAT’s new website to lure gay travellers to the country, Go Thai Be Free dot com, is billed as a LGBT microsite and “your best source of information when planning your travel experience to Thailand.” The site is the brainchild of a travel agent who attributes his vast pool of knowledge of all things Thai thanks to his “several visits to Thailand.” The site is great on hype but lacking of any actual information. If it were a slick holiday brochure it’d kick ass. As a website for gay men visiting Thailand it sucks.

Consider it’s list of gay and gay friendly hotels, a loosely used term for ‘we don’t care who you bed just give us your money.’ Whether these 5 star hotels would all welcome you with open arms when accompanied by your boy du jour nightly is questionable – I know just how friendly the Mandarin Oriental is about locals visiting their hotel. The only downscale places mentioned are The Rose Hotel, which the site calls “one of the best-kept secret addresses in the city” and The Babylon Bangkok whose blurb goes like this:

Enfolding you in an ineffable experience, and never seen before the eyes of men! The perfect place to indulge your wildest fantasies! Break out the Royal Barge, polish up the tiara, dust off those ruby-red shoes, fasten those chastity belts, or simply cruise in your pink Cadillac on the highway of Love! The Babylon Bangkok is here for the world of men and – of course – just for YOU! The ‘Queendom’ – or ‘Kingdom’ of Heaven is waiting for you in this ‘must visit’ destination!

Babylon is Bangkok’s sole gay hotel according to the website. Perhaps if the author visited Thailand several more times he’d discover a few more best-kept secret addresses in the city. He might even discover a few gay restaurants, or even a few frequented by gay men since the list of ‘gay friendly’ eateries on his site have more to do with the high dollar check you’ll get at the end of your meal. At the very least another visit or two might provide him with a bit more info on the restaurants he does list other than their address.

Go Thai Be Free lists 4 gay discos in Bangkok. DJ Station is not one of them. The list of bars starts out with one gay bar (the drag queens are the tip off), and then after a lengthy list of ‘gay friendly’ places there are a few more listed as gay. The Balcony and Telephone Pub get a mention, and DJ Station finally makes the list too but no one knew if it was a gay bar or a gay friendly one so they left that blank. And they could only find four massage places for gay men in all of Bangkok.

The section of Things To Do looks cribbed from a twenty-year-old edition of Frommer’s, but does suggest a visit to the crocodile farm so all is not lost. And not that any gay man would have any reason to be interested in Patpong, but they’ve listed it anyway – or at least the night market – noting it is an internationally known red light district catering mainly, though not exclusively, to foreign tourists and expatriates. That area has been on my To-Do list for years and thanks to Go Thai Be Free I’m going to make it a part of my Thailand experience on my next trip.

Pattaya, as a destination that might possibly be of interest to gay men, gets a four paragraph write up all on a page of its own. If you count a sentence as a paragraph. In their few words, Pattaya is a party beach resort, and its rep – as an also to its vibrant beaches – is that it is “internationally known for its go-go and beer bars, Pattaya is a hot spot for those looking to indulge in their most secretive desires.” Had the author spent a single night in Sunee Plaza he’d have found how just how un-secret those desires are.

With a list of 6 bars in Pattaya and 8 massage places you immediately sense the deep familiarity the author has with the city. Which is a bonus for those who post on the gay message boards looking for daytime activities in Pattaya. Because only on Go Thai Be Free will you hear of Pattaya’s The Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew ‘Emerald Buddha Temple’ – another best-kept secret address evidently. I wonder if the Grand Palace in Pattaya is closed as frequently as is the one in Bangkok.

According to the site, while in Chiang Mai touri “often find themselves riding a water buffalo, or planting rice in the fields,” and “A trip outside the city’s ancient walls reveals lush hills home tribal villagers and sprawling fields.” Before I got to discover what Phuket had to offer to me as a gay traveller, I fell asleep so you’ll have to check the site out yourself.

They didn’t skimp on using the word gay on the new site, and there are plenty of rainbows all over the place too. Beyond that, you’ll find little that isn’t offered for newbies to Thailand on a non-gay site. The site claims it is an unique and in-depth website that serves as a resource for any gay traveler looking for insights in gay Thailand. And it acknowledges that “knowing little tips or receiving a little help in navigating the Kingdom and knowing where to stay and what to do and see is often what travelers need and look for.” It just doesn’t bother delivering on those points. But if you want to visit Thailand and experience the ‘It’s A Small World’ E-Ticket ride, this is the site for you. If you want to visit Thailand and actually acknowledge that you are in a foreign country, try surfing Lonely Planet’s site instead. It’s not a gay site but doesn’t purport to be either.

It is a shame that a website that has the blessings of TAT does such a dismal job of providing accurate or worthwhile information. To be fair, the hotels, bars, and other establishments that are listed include links to their respective websites so anyone who wants to know more about the place than its address and phone number can use Go Thai Be Free as a gateway. Just don’t use it for facts. Unless you really believe Bangkok is known as “the city of smiles” or that the gay hot spots start in Bangkok at Sukhumvit Road.

Go Thai Be Free’s biggest failing is that it is supposed to be a site for gay men and they forgot to include the gay. Each destination page has a beautiful selection of photographs. The one for Bangkok has 25 pix. 2 are of gay places though one is from the GCiruit Party, which has little to do with Thailand. Pattaya gets 13 pictures which include one of a ladyboy cabaret and one of the Boyz Town sign while Chiang Mai gets a whopping 19 pictures, none of which have anything to do with gays. But it does have the same shot of elephants twice, so maybe some of those are gay elephants which would be apropos since the site tends to treat gays as the elephant in the room.

I can understand TAT not wanting a site it is involved with going into great lengths about the gogo bar scene and commercial sex industry; ya wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea about the country. But Rule #1 in marketing is to know your customer. And there is nothing on Go Thai Be Free that recommends the country to gay men. As a non-gay site it is adequate. But unnecessary. There are plenty of other Thailand travel sites that do a better job, have less grammatical and spelling errors, and don’t make the author’s unfamiliarity with his subject so glaringly obvious. Maybe the slogan Go Thai Be Free means be free of gays and lesbians since they rarely make an appearance on the site. And if TAT’s new website was the sole source to recommend the country to gay travellers, Thailand would be too.

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