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Pattaya Gay Festival raises 300,000 baht for HIV/AIDS charities

Mantra’s Frescobaldi wine dinner

PCEC goes to the movies

Pattaya Gay Festival raises 300,000 baht for HIV/AIDS charities

Lots of fun at our table. (Standing from left) Wood and Peter. (Sitting from left) Andrea, Elfi, and David. (From right) David and Mustafa.

Elfi Seitz
Pattaya’s pink society turned out in force at Boyz Town for the finale of the annual Pattaya Gay Festival, a year-long series of street parties and events designed to raise money for HIV/AIDS-related charities.

Jim the Superstar.
The Dec. 2 “Boyz Town Pride Street Party” was centered around a huge stage at the Boyz Town gate. More than 300 people paid 300 baht each to attend the fair and take in the colorful shows.
Gay Festival founder Jim Lumsden of Boyz Boyz Boyz hosted the party, changing into numerous beautiful dresses to cross dress into a perfect lady of the night and even sang a few songs.
Handsome young men went from table to table to present roses and condoms to the guests and sold lottery tickets. Many hoped to win one of the many prizes, including a motorbike and a yellow sapphire ring.
In all, the street party brought in more than 300,000 baht.
The truly super shows entertained the more than 270 guests, who’s entrance tickets, buying of lottery tickets and sponsorships, the handbag selling of the day before and many other activities brought more than 300,000 baht into the cashbox of the Gay Festival. The money will be used to help the many AIDS victims the Gay Festival is taking care of.
Pattaya-based AIDS doctor Dr. Philippe Seur, whose Heart 2000 has received more than 20 million baht from the Gay Festival since its 2001 start, was present as well and thanked all the guests and sponsors.
Only with your help it is possible to help these poor people,” he said.
The Pattaya Gay Festival has raised more than 27 million baht since its inception. It begins each February with an opening street party with at least one event a month planned. It concludes with several days of activities centered around World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.

Mantra’s Frescobaldi wine dinner

Sophia Loren wearing Chanel

Dr Iain Corness
The latest wine event held at the Mantra restaurant was called the Frescobaldi Wine Dinner, with a selection of wines from the Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi vineyards, a prestigious 700 year old Tuscany label.

ItalThai’s Anuchit Saeng-on (right) with his vivacious Italian friend.

ItalThai’s Anuchit Saeng-on was present, representing the importer of this range of wines to Thailand, accompanied by a vivacious Italian lady who was yet to get her business cards printed, and I certainly couldn’t nail her down long enough to get her to write on the back of my business card!
Mantra’s ‘superchef’ Supachai is always there, quietly moving around, making sure his seven kitchens are operating correctly. I have also noticed over the past year that he is becoming more adventurous with his menus, and the Frescobaldi dinner had a couple of surprises.
The first was a New Zealand venison carpaccio infused with extra virgin olive oil and grated parmesan cheese. I added just a twist of rock salt and black pepper, and it was a wonderful starter. This was drunk with a very clean Frescobaldi Albizzia Chardonnay Toscana 2007. This arrived at the table just a little too chilled, but soon attained the correct temperature to allow the citrus flavor to come out.
The next course was a beautiful Tasmanian salmon fillet, enjoyed by everyone, though personally I found the accompanying Pomino Bianco had no bouquet, taste or finish! However, please remember that wine appreciation is a personal thing. What I might dislike does not necessarily mean you will not like it!
The second surprise was a German reindeer ragout, which had that very strong flavor, which for me was a little too much, but for Madame (who also ate mine) it was perfect. However, for me, reindeer are best kept for Santa. The Remole Toscana IGT was very pleasant, with good body too.
The main course was char-grilled Australian lamb chops, which were very tender, and the Frescobaldi Nipozzano Riserva DOCG 2005 served with the lamb was the wine of the night. The happy and effusive Italian lady told me it was “Sophia Loren wearing Chanel.” I could see the analogy. Great dish, great wine, great evening.

PCEC goes to the movies

After Master of Ceremonies Richard Silverberg welcomed everyone to the regular Sunday meeting of the Pattaya City Expats Club on December 6 at the Amari’s Henry J. Beans Restaurant, it was announced that the Chonburi Governor Senee Jittakasem and District Chief Mongkol Thamakittikhun had extended a special invitation to the Pattaya City Expats Club to be their guests at the Chonburi Fair on December 9. Further, transportation was being provided by the District Chief.

Following a presentation of unforgettable film clips by member David Garmaise, MC Richard Silverberg introduces the club activities for this week.
After this and the usual announcements, Richard introduced fellow member David Garmaise. David has an avid interest in movies. He has collected many movies and stores them in digital format using about 350 gigabytes of space. He has excerpted several scenes from some of his favorite movies, which he shared with his fellow members and guests. His title for the video presentation was Take Me to the Movies. He divided the various movie snippets into four categories entitled: You’re Such an Animal; Love is a Many Splendored Thing, Life’s Little Moments, and There’s No Life Like It.
The first category was from movies that featured animals in some fashion, such as scenes from Dances with Wolves with Kevin Costner showing his first encounter with a wolf; Jurassic Park where the actors first encounter a huge dinosaur; and Harrison Ford facing a pit full of snakes from one of the Indiana Jones series. But the crowning scene from this category was the classic Mongo (Alex Karras) knocking over a horse with one blow from Blazing Saddles. There was also some animation scenes involving the squirrel with his acorn and our favorite fishes from Nemo.

Lovely Kavita from Pattaya International Ladies Club presents the cookbook called ‘Our International Secrets’ - put together by the Rayong Ladies Circle, Burapha Ladies Community and the PILC. Proceeds will be donated to housing projects in Rayong, Moo Baan Eire and Moo Baan Hugh Green. To get a copy email [email protected].

The second category dealt with scenes involving the love relationship between the characters such as Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) in the 1967 film The Graduate. Of course you cannot think of love relationships without Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca) or Omar Sharif and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) or Rhett Butler and Miss Scarlett (Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind).
These scenes were followed up with the third category about those little moments in life. David chose several scenes from well known movies for this category including: Arthur, Airplane, and Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. Some very well known scenes David included were Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) confronting a sword waving menace with some fear, then remembering he was armed with a revolver and the classic from Rob Reiner’s film, When Harry Met Sally, about which Wikipedia says: The film may be best known for a scene featuring the two title characters having lunch at Katz’s Deli in Manhattan. They are arguing about a man’s ability to recognize when a woman is faking an orgasm. Sally claims men cannot tell the difference, and to prove her point, she vividly (but fully clothed) fakes one as other diners watch. The scene ends with Sally casually returning to her meal as a nearby patron (played by Reiner’s mother) places her order: “I’ll have what she’s having.”
David’s video finished with an observation on life with some excellent and oft humorous clips from An Officer and a Gentleman, Master and Commander, Pirates of the Caribbean, and others. Of course everyone should remember Jack Nicholson as the Marine Colonel in A Few Good Men and the scene where Sydney Poitier reveals to Rod Steiger that he is a police officer in the Heat of the Night.
One scene from a the well known Humphrey Bogart film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre provides one of the most famous lines in film history, when the Mexican bandit replies: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!”
After enjoying the entertaining video, Emcee Richard updated everyone on upcoming events and then called on Hawaii Bob Sutterfield to conduct the always informative, interesting, and sometime humorous Open Forum where questions are asked and answered about living in Thailand and Pattaya in particular.

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