About this blog

A prop for a lion dance in Talad Phlu

The blog started in April 2006 under its old name Bangkok of the Mind, and carried on regularly until November 2011 when I started a new job, and found I had much less time to write.

BOTM2, as it was known by then, went on two-year hiatus before resuming briefly in November 2013 and running until the following February. Since then, nothing!

The last time I blogged regularly I wrote about my partner and his cooking, Thai celebrities and quirky news events which took my fancy, and my Thai friends of the night. 

I wrote partly for Adsense clicks and partly for enjoyment. In pursuit of the first goal, fellow bloggers advised me how to monetise content. As the blog grew in popularity I started writing less for myself and more to build a following.

Fast forward to the present, and I have flipped back to writing mainly for my own pleasure. The days of avidly courting readers are gone, as I suspect most netizens would prefer to check their social media feed anyway.

Since going offline I have gone over the old blog and weeded out posts which look too dated, such as those concerning Thai celebrities or news events. The exception is stories which offer some historical context such as the divided politics, failed elections and street riots we lived with back then. 

Pictures

A human ladder in Talad Phlu

In the process of cleaning house, however, I lost many pictures which illustrated the BOTM2 blog, including the bulk of those poorly lit images I took of Maiyuu's cooking (great, I hear you say).

Those that remain I have posted to four stand-alone pages highlighting his European-style savoury and dessert dishes. I have replaced the bulk of the non-cooking images as well.

In their place, have trawled the internet for pics of Thai models and the like - actually, anyone who came up under a search in Thai for "handsome guys" - to help break up the sea of grey ink which would otherwise greet readers. I have also added more "real life" pictures which I should have posted at the time, including images from the condo, and old haunts in Talad Phlu and Pin Khlao.

Comments

I have left most of the reader comments alone, even if they refer to pics of Maiyuu's cooking which no longer illustrate the posts. It's not possible to weed them all out; the loss of pics is part of the general process of decay which occurs when a blog goes on ice for many years as this one has done. I have updated and fixed what I could, but it is an ongoing process - a labour of love, if you like.

Many comments themselves failed to survive the transition; they fell by the wayside when I transferred the posts to a tester blog for cleaning. When I moved them back, hundreds of reader comments attached to various posts had disappeared. 

As part of the blog refurbishing process I have now copied them across from the tester blog and inserted them manually. They appear in batches rather than individual comments, so all is not lost. I would like to thank readers for the generous support they gave this blog.

For a sample of reader reaction, try the lively discussion about the value of my friendship with young Ball and his family from the slum community next to us, here and here. Or try the debate, here and here, on coming out, after a blogger expressed doubt about the virtues of declaring his gayness to his parents, and I dared defend him. On a lighter note, try  the day we moved into a new condo in town from our old place in Thon Buri.