Club Sanook Newsletter - January 2009 Newsletter

This edition of Bulletin from Bangkok is very petite. We had not planned to publish a newsletter until next month, but there are a few things we wanted you to know right away.

The New Government. First, peace has returned to our happy Kingdom and we have a new Prime Minister who is young, dynamic and not bad looking. The airport drama is history. The tourism industry here found creative ways to deal with stranded people and frayed nerves. Most visitors went home happy and do not blame the entire Kingdom for the selfishness of a few.

The High Season That Wasn't. As you might imagine, "peak season" was big disaster for most tourism and hospitality companies here. Many, many cancellations resulting from the political disorder and the world's economic hangover left many hotels here virtually empty during what is usually the busiest two weeks of the entire year. We even heard that one major hotel in Bangkok closed eighteen floors because of cancellations. Our gayest hotels in Thailand, however, were full up. Fortunately our customers do not react so quickly or dramatically to unpleasantness in the news.

The Silver Lining. The big dip in visitor arrivals in the region is not necessarily bad news for you. We have renegotiated our agreements with many of the hotels we use. As a result, quite a few of them have either dropped their rates significantly, begun to offer low-season rates beginning this month, or implemented "stay three nights, pay for two" kinds of schemes. Consequently, we have bargains galore for Club Sanook Members. You can see all of them in the Members-only section of the Club Sanook website: www.clubsanook.com/members. Not yet a Member? Join here.

We think these prices are so special that we hope we will see you here much sooner than expected. With fuel costs lower and a catastrophic peak travel period behind them, we hear airlines are dropping fares, too. Yippie!

Now that the endless distractions have hopefully come to an end we finally got around to tabulating the ballots in 2008's third annual photo contest. We are happy to announce the winners!

To see the finalists and all of the winners click here. You will also see winners of the special prizes offered by a number of our friends and industry colleagues.

Your favorite photo not a winner? Perhaps you did not vote. Photos in our annual contest get better every year. We are grateful for all who entered photos and those who voted.

Eat, Drink & Miss Fu

Douglas has updated his blog. Along with an extra large dose of political opinion, Douglas continues his "Where to Eat" feature with reviews of a German brewery in Bangkok, three top choices in Phnom Penh, and his pick for top Italian restaurant in Thailand. If you have not yet joined this blog's cult following, read it here.

Our painfully efficient Membership Secretary Miss Fu always seems to create a great deal of curiosity. She does not work in our office and is seldom seen in public. We understand that she appeared in a photo recently. Miss Fu does not stand in front of a camera too often, so this is a big event. We wanted to publish the photo here, but we do not have a copy yet and did not want to delay this newsletter. So if you are really curious, return to this newsletter in a day or two.

New Years Quiz

Enter our fun January 2009 quiz by answering the questions below. Everyone who answers all the questions correctly will be entered into a random drawing towin 500 Purple Bonus Points. If you are the winner and you answer the bonus question correctly you will win an extra 500 points. You must be a Club Sanook Member to answer the quiz. Deadline to enter is 31 January 2009. One entry per Member, please.

Purple Dragon on Plaxo

Purple Dragon recently began to show its face on FaceBook and Plaxo. Search for "Douglas Thompson" or "Apiwat Curtin." Plaxo also hosts our Gay Asian Travel group. If you use either of these social networking websites, please connect with us there. Join one of our travel groups on Plaxo and we will give you 100 Purple Bonus Points. Just send us a message after you link to us.

We also invite you to subscribe to our RSS feeds. Just click on the orange colored icon you see on most of our pages.

Seeing Double?

If you received two or more emails regarding this issue of Bulletin from Bangkok, that means we have duplicate records in our Membership list. Please let Miss Fu know so that we do not clutter your In box with redundant email.

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