Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc

It took ages for the Xperia Arc to launch in Thailand but the wait was worth it.
+ Sleek and super thin design (8.7mm)
+ Sony’s first phone to run Android 2.3 Gingerbread, so flicking through applications, games and social media is much smoother
+ Sony’s TimeScape offers great looking multi-tasking
+ The Exmor R takes pics in low-light conditions
+ No front camera
Specs: 4.2-inch BRAVIA touch screen (480x854 pixels) | 1GHz Snapdragon processor | 8MP camera capturing 720p HD video | Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Price: B19,900
www.fb.com/sethailand

LG Optimus 2X

First launched in Dec 2010 in South Korea, the Optimus 2X is now the first phone that comes with a dual-core processor for faster and smoother running programs.
+ Awesome look and metal finishing
+ A 1.3MP front camera for real-time video chat
+ The arrival of the Galaxy S II (probably next month) will make the Optimus quickly obsolete
Specs: 4-inch touch screen (480x800 pixels) | Dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra processor | 8MP camera capturing 1,080p HD video + 1.3MP front camera | Android 2.2 Froyo
Price: B20,900
www.lge.com/th

Samsung Galaxy S II (BK PICK)

Launched in South Korea in April and in the UK in May, the successor to the popular Galaxy S could arrive here as early as June.
+ A super fast processor
+ 8.49mm thick, making it thinner than Xperia Arc
+ A wider and brighter screen. We admit we’re holding our breath for the hands-on as rumor says it’s coming in Jun
+ It’s not yet in stores
Specs: 4.27-inch Super AMOLED Plus touch screen (480x800 pixels) | Dual-core 1.2GHz Hummingbird processor | 8MP camera capturing 1,080p HD video + 2MP front camera | Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Price: TBA
www.samsung.com/th

Motorola DEFY

The quietly launched Motorola DEFY won’t end its manufacturer’s slow demise but it is built like a tank.
+ IP67 certified, meaning the phone is resistant to scratching, dust, falls (1.5-1.8 meters) and water (1 meter, 30 minutes)
+ The specs just can’t compare with the other phones in this roundup
Specs: 3.7-inch touch screen (480x854 pixels) | 800MHz OMAP processor | 5MP camera capturing 720p HD video | Android 2.1 Eclair
Price: B12,900
www.motorola.com/th

Nexus S

Launched in the USA last year, the Nexus S is Google’s second official phone based on Samsung’s Galaxy S platform.
+ The world’s first Android 2.3 Gingerbread processor phone, Google phones also get free upgrades to the latest versions of the Android operating system
+ Front camera
+ 5MP camera with non-HD video
Specs: 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen (480x800 pixels) | 1GHz Hummingbird processor | 5MP camera capturing 480p video + front VGA camera | Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Price: B18,900
www.google.com/nexus

MAY

Borneo Jazz 2011

May 12-15. Sarawak, Malaysia. RM35 -200. www.jazzborneo.com
Formerly known as Miri Jazz, the event features Grammy Award winner John Hammond—who will be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on May 4 and is a front-runner for Acoustic Artist of the Year at the Blues Music Awards a day later—as well as multiple Grammy nominee Maria Muldaur, who is perhaps best known for her hit single “Midnight at the Oasis.” Staged at ParkCity Everly Hotel in Miri, the festival will also host musicians from nearly a dozen countries including Australia, Brazil, China, France, India and Japan.

Sydney Writers’ Festival

May 16-22. Sydney, Australia. Various prices. www.swf.org.au
Adore poetry, fiction and plays? This annual literary festival promises crowds of over 65,000 people at Pier4/5 and Sydney Theatre at Walsh, partaking in programs headlined by renowned writers. This year’s event features big-name authors such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham (The Hours, Specimen Days) and Howard Jacobson (The Finkler Questions). Some programs are free.

Design Festa 33

May 14-15. Tokyo, Japan. One day Y800-1,000, two days Y1,500-1,800. www.designfesta.com
Colorful manga figures, cute handcrafted products, cool t-shirts, J-pop/rock concerts, romantic movies and cosplay harajuku girls—you’ll it find all here at Asia’s largest design event. Though taking during a tragic time for Japan, the event, which started in 1994, still promises to feature shows, exhibitions and performances from more than 2,850 talents for the 33rd straight year. As a special event for this year, there will be a postcard sale to raise money for earthquake victims.

Brass Explosion! 2011

May 27-30. Singapore. Various prices. www.brasssociety.com
For the second year running, Asia’s biggest brass music festival gathers more than 250 international music talents from 15 countries for an eight-day extravaganza. Highlights include the gala concert on May 30 (S$20/50 [B485/1,210]) and the Master of Brass Concert on May 27 (S$20 [B485]) that features Scott Hartman, a trombone professor at Yale, trumpet soloist Paul Archibald from the Royal Academy of Music, tuba player James Gourlay, euphonium soloist David Childs and horn duo Kerry Turner and Kirstina Mascher. Some events are also free of charge.

Varekai by Cirque du Soleil

Through May 29. Seoul, South Korea. KRW60,000-220,000 (B1,661-6,090). Jun 22-Jul 10. Manila, Philippines. PHP2,700-6,500 (B1,870-B4,500). www.cirquedusoleil.com
As the world’s most-celebrated circus and acrobat troupe, Cirque du Soleil’s productions are nothing if not extravagant. Touring Asia now is their show Varekai, which means “wherever” in Romany. First premiered in 2002, Varekai portrays the adventure of a fallen angel in a lush jungle. May is the last chance to catch the show in Seoul, South Korea, before it premieres in Manila in June.

JUNE

Melbourne International Jazz Festival

Jun 4-13. Melbourne, Australia. www.melbournejazz.com
A baby at just five years old, the Melbourne Jazz Festival nevertheless pulls in music lovers with its list of visiting jazz talents. This year you’ll get to experience shows by the Ron Carter Trio, Chris Botti, Sonny Rollins and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, among others.

Bali Arts Festival

Jun 12-Jul 10. Bali, Indonesia. www.baliartsfestival.com
This month-long arts festival is the largest cultural event in Denpasar, the capital city of Bali. Now in its 33rd year, the Bali Arts Festival is bringing together local art forms and artist from several villages on the island to showcase their folk performances, dances and music as well as handicraft products and textiles. Showcases change daily so check the schedule prior to your visit.

Shanghai International Film Festival

Jun 11-19. Shanghai, China. www.siff.com
Started in 1993, the Shanghai International Film Festival is China’s premier movie event. Apart from the line up of international flicks competing for the Golden Goblet Award, the event will feature six classic films by Polish director Krzystof Kieslowski (The Decalogue, Threee Colours) to commemorate his 100th anniversary, 15 years after his death.

JULY

Gion Matsuri

Jul 1-31. Kyoto, Japan. www.yokosojapan.org
According to legend, it all started around 869 CE when there was an epidemic in Tokyo and people had festive ceremonies in the streets to appease the gods. The celebration has been continuing till the present day and has become Kyoto’s largest festival. Though the festival lasts the whole month of July, the grandest highlight is on Jul 17 when there’s the Yamaboko Parade where thousands of people parade through the streets playing traditional music and carrying offerings for the gods. One of the most popular tourist activities is dressing up in traditional kimonos and, well, just going with

Rainforest World Music Festival

Jul 8-10. Sarawak, Malaysia. One day RM85-110, three-day RM260. www.rainforestmusic-borneo.com
Now in its 14th year, the Rainforest World Music Festival is ranked one of the top 25 international festivals by UK-based world music magazine, Songlines. Set at the base of Gunung Santubong in the Sarawak Cultural Village, this year’s festival features performers from nearly two dozen countries, from Algeria to Vanuatu.

Night Festival

Jul 16-17, 7pm-2am. National Museum of Singapore. Singapore.
It’s just like Night at the Museum—minus the walking dinosaurs and talking mummies. Apart from the National Museum staying open until late, there will be special exhibitions, films, art and cultural performances and some acrobatic shows. The theme this year is peace.

Melbourne International Film Festival

Jul 21-Aug 7. Melbourne, Australia. Various prices.
www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au
Founded in 1951, MIFF is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2011. Ranked the largest film festival in Australia, the MIFF showcases more than 400 films from international directors—everything from large-scale productions to short films and documentaries. The exact line-up is still pending, but expect the event to showcase its impressive archive of the award-winning films.

Looking for the Best Ramen Restaurants in Bangkok? Look here.

Taishoken

This chain was established in Tokyo, Japan more than 50 years ago by the God of Ramen, Kazuo Yamagishi, inventor of tsukemen, also known as dipping ramen in Japan (or morisoba). Thanks to the success of Taishoken, tsukemen has now become one of the most popular versions of ramen in Japan. This shop also has a sibling at K-Village called Ganso Tsukemen Yamagishi whose name came from a ramen chef who learned the recipe directly from Yamagishi.
Champion Bowl: Tsukemen tonkatsu shoyu (B260) is served in a set of two bowls. One comes with shiny yellow noodles while the other is a fragrant bowl of thick, dark soup with big chunks of pork and a hard boiled-egg. If you want some extra heat, they also do a spicy version served with chili, pork and miso.
Our take: A bit like a saltier palo ramen at first, but the dense and thick stew adds so much texture and depth to the dish, our noodles were all gone before we knew it.

Tsujita 

Open in Tokyo in 2003 and one of the most famous ramen shops in Japan, Tsujita’s secret weapon is its slow-cooked pork and chicken bones mixed with fish, vegetable and other ingredients. Simmered for at least 12 hours until it becomes brown, thick and covered with a layer of shiny oil, it is then served in tsukenmen (dipping ramen) style. Are you a newbie? They have their own way of eating ramen printed as easy to follow instructions on the wall.
Champion Bowl: Using their ordering machine, get a bowl of nidaime tsukemen (B260). The tsukemen comes with two bowls, hot thick soup and ramen noodles with a slice of lime and paper-thin seaweed on top. The gravy-like soup is packed with slices of grilled pork (chashu) which go perfectly with the chewy noodles. Don’t put the lime juice in right away. As they suggest, the best way to taste it is to add it when you’re halfway through. It refreshes your taste buds, cuts the fat, and the lime doesn’t get cooked. Their hanjuku egg is also great!
Our take: We love our soup fatty so we don’t really need the limey gimmick to enjoy this great broth.

Shodai Keisuke

Another Tokyo original, this black soup is cooked from fish mixed with seven types of miso (fermented soya beans). It owes its unique color to the bamboo charcoal used in its preparation, an ingredient believed to have detoxifying properties. We also learned that Shodai Kesuke’s chef, Keisuke Takeda, is a celebrity chef who originally trained in French cooking but grew famous with his innovative ramen and Japanese recipes.
Champion Bowl: The tontoro chashu kuro kwami (B280) is a black, dense, shiny broth—impressive—topped with a slice of hard-boiled egg and chashu, seaweed and saffron. They also have instructions on how to best enjoy your black ramen: start with the yellow ramen noodles, then add more peppers and chili as you progress through the bowl. The chef also recommends you finish the soup with a bowl of rice.
Our take: Big as a washbowl, to finish the soup with rice you’d have to be starving. A fantastic ramen overall, both for aroma and taste. You’ll soon forget the slightly creepy color.

Kibi

Kibi’s ultimate selling point is that its chicken soup contains natural collagen. A soup that makes your skin look better? What great marketing! Before the soup becomes this thick and rich, the chef has to simmer some 60 kilograms of chicken bones for two days. The result, a delicious golden-colored soup.
Champion Bowl: Paitung ramen (B290) is topped with grilled-pork and chicken, a hard-boiled egg, bamboo shoots and saffron.
Our take: Though the toppings are nice, the soup is so rich and the color so appealing, it’s gotta be what the doctor ordered: a chicken soup a day. While a soup this fatty might require a spin on the treadmill, it’s definitely worth it. Don’t miss out on their fresh iced uji (shaved-ice with red beans, B90).

Gokumiso Ramen

This is a collaboration of two popular ramen places: Sukeya and Ginya. Sukeya is famed for its tonkatsu ramen served in a dense pork bone soup while Ginya’s miso ramen achieves a perfect mix of spices and miso according to the grandma’s original recipe from Nagano, Japan’s miso capital.
Champion Bowl: Based on a concentrated miso soup mixed with spices, gokumiso ramen (B180) is served topped with stired-fried pork with spices and chili oil, a slice of pork, bean sprouts and corns.
Our take: The bowl is perfect for ramen lovers who love spices, as the soup, when mixed with stir-fried pork, gives a smell which is a bit like Indian cooking and goes well with the thick noodles. Don’t like spices? Give it a pass.

Setagaya

Another Tokyo import, this fish soup uses dried herrings and Vietnamese salt they claim is the world’s best. There’s also shoyu and braised pork bone for a full umami flavor.
Champion Bowl: The Setagaya Ramen (B270) comes in two styles, shuyu or salt soup. Toppings include grilled pork, bamboo shoot, seaweed and two slices of boiled egg—or add chopped onions for a sweeter, more fragrant broth.
Our take: Despite the pleasing red color and all the hype regarding the exotic ingredients, this soup is a bit of a disappointment. Salty but non-fatty, it’s a sad, diet ramen. Still, their boiled egg is better than others.

Ramen Champion, Arena 10, Thonglor Soi 10. Open Sun-Thu 11am-midnight, Fri-Sat 11am-3am

Elsewhere

NEW> Chabuton

Recently, you might have seen a bunch of people waiting in front of a small ramen place next to Lido Theatre at Siam Square. They’re queuing for Chabuton, the brainchild of 2002 TV Champion Award-winning Yasuji Morizumi, a former French cuisine chef who has combines his Gallic culinary background with Japanese traditional noodles. Yasuji now owns more than 20 ramen restaurants in Japan and the US.
The bowl: The tonkatsu ramen (B130, B175) is the original hit. You will be served a bowl of noodles in concentrated pork-bone soup that’s been cooked for more than 15 hours, topped with Japanese bunching onions and slices of special grilled pork.
Our take: It’s not just that we had to wait for half an hour in the queue that has us saying this soup is delicious. The noodles are less exciting but the pork, with its grilled scent, is superb.
Siam Square, next to Lido Theatre, 02-635-7930. Open Mon-Fri 11am-10pm, Sat-Sun 10am-10pm

NEW> Ramen Planet Mutsumiya

Celebrity jewelry designer Suriyon Sri-Orathaikul takes a break from diamonds to import authentic pork-bone-soup ramen from Hokkaido. Ramen Planet Mutsumiya, founded in 1996, is the creation of chef Take Rokosuke who is famed as a ramen Iron Chef with his authentic-Hokkaido Mutsumiya-style ramen. Sat next to the popular Bonchon Fried Chicken, this ramen place is decked out in a simple Japanese simple style using dark wood.
The bowl: Their tonkatsu ramen (B170) is a perfect combination of yellow noodles, bean sprouts, Japanese onions and a big slice of grilled pork.
Our take:  We found that the soup of the tonkatsu ramen, though pretty dense, is a bit too sweet for our palate. To correct that, either add a splash of shoyu (Japanese soy sauce) or just get the black tongkatsu ramen, which has shoyu in it—ah, now you’ve got a delicious broth.
2/F, Seen Space, 251/1 Thonglor Soi 13, 02-185-2373. Open daily 11am-11pm

Classic Ramen Spots

Ramen Tei. Four branches. Try 11/1 Soi Thaniya, Surawong Rd., 02-234-4326. Open daily 11am-midnight
Yamagoya. Four branches. Try 98-102 Surawongs Rd., 02-185-3790-7. Open daily 10am-1pm
Grand Ramen. 25/18-19 Sukhumvit 55 (Soi Thong Lor), 02-714-1020. Open daily 11am-11pm
Bankara Ramen. The Manor, 32/1 Sukhumvit Soi 39, 02-662-5162-3. Open daily 11am-11pm
Ganso Tsukemen Yamagishi. 2/F Zone A K-Village Sukhumvit Soi 26, 02-661-2931. Open daily 11.30am-10pm
Ringer Hut. 2/F Zone B K-Village Sukhumvit Soi 26, 02-665-6470. Open daily 11am-10pm

I graduated with a degree in education but landed a PR position for a shopping mall. I quickly realized that I could write.

If you don’t take risks, you can’t get ahead. It’s a risk moving to a new magazine for a new market. But having worked for several magazines that closed I am used to this kind of risk.

I’ve been a fan of the original Attitude from the UK since I picked up their fifth anniversary issue. I wished one day somebody could make it happen here too.

Gays are difficult to please, as we all know. We have Facebook feedback saying that people need a gay magazine that imparts better wisdom and values than Attitude does. At least we’re a lot better than those model magazines that come with behind-the-scenes CDs.

Attitude Thailand won’t talk about religion and we won’t point out who is or who is not gay. That’s a personal matter. Thai culture is different from the UK’s.

It would be great if PM Abhisit could be on our cover. Tony Blair appeared on the UK edition’s cover. We all know there are gays in parliament but we can’t talk about it. If Abhisit is on the cover I believe he’ll get more support from gays and lesbians.

I’m not political. I like reading about politics but I don’t take part in gay political rallies.

Gay rights and gay marriage: sometimes these issues are not essential. The current constitution is the first in our history that accepts the diversity of sexes.

We already have more rights than our friends in Southeast Asia. Filipino gays might be able to marry but Singaporean gays are so stressed out, they have to fly to Thailand to have fun.

Child adoption for gays should be legalized. It’s common in other countries, but we don’t see it much here because there is no law explicitly supporting it. Those who object to adoption for gays should go watch The Kids are Alright, a film about a normal lesbian couple with teenage children—and a happy ending.

Gay men are more likely to be promiscuous. That’s different from lesbians, who usually have long-term relationships.

Because of our cultural complexes, we see two gay men living as a couple as more scandalous, while lesbians don’t attract so much attention.

Today if we talk about “sex” we also need to talk about “gender.” Sex is your appearance but gender is what is revealed when you have sexual intercourse. This issue is very complex.

Thai society loves to hide things. We all know we have problems but we just ignore them. It’s like we don’t talk about corruption, which we all know exists, but it’s dangerous to mention it.

Sex education won’t encourage more sexual intercourse but rather help protect lives.

Homosexuality used to be described as an illness, which is not true. Today’s psychologists agree that being gay is the result of genetics and is beyond our control.

I like the Kinsey Scale theory that says that the spectrum of heterosexuality to homosexuality ranges from 0 to 10. A guy might love his friend as much as his girlfriend but doesn’t want to have sex with him. He might be a 2. The degree of homosexuality varies.

I’m not saying everyone is gay. Gays are those who really accept what they are.

The biggest pressure on the editor of Thailand’s first gay magazine is society’s perceptions. When we ask for an interview, people have questions about who we are and what we do.

Gays in Thailand can sometimes be too rad [annoyingly flamboyant] even if they are not katoey [transgender], especially when they are among each other. For example, those skin-headed students in skirts and tank tops might one day grow up and feel silly when they look back at their teenage years.

We should stop calling gay men toot [faggot]. It’s rude.

Sexiness doesn’t mean nudity. Some guys are sexy wearing a pair of jeans. It’s in the eye of the beholder.

While Chinese, Japanese and Korean looks are still the favorite looks among Thai gays, some really prefer those hunks with classic Thai faces and dark skin.

Thai television gives gays a bad image. Gays are just clowns because the censorship board would reject any other depictions. Everyone has to work together to change that: the producer, censorship board and also the audience.

Gays, your happiness starts when you have self-acceptance. It’s much more than just coming out.