PeterRS

I forgot to add one point. I checked the apps in Taipei quite regularly. On previous visits I have found Blued very active. Sadly that site has changed its format and has many more ads than before. This may have something to do with the original owner of the site having stepped down as Chairman and CEO in August and the influence of Hornet which purchased a stake in Blued in 2016. I found Hornet the worst site for advertising.

Now that is really odd given your post in another thread that you would NOT go to see a doctor to determine if you have anal cancer or not. Which is it and why the change of heart?

But as I thought I had clearly stated, the Turkish Airlines jet was not departing. It was merely being towed to some far off part of BKK as it would not be departing for Istanbul for at least 6 hours. It had picked up no passengers and no luggage. The plane was empty! The only passengers waiting at that bay were China Airlines passengers. So Turkish Airlines was obviously late in arriving and then had merely to offload pasengers and luggage. There were several vacant bays in that part of BKK. Clearly Turkish had been assigned the same bay as China Airlines. But given that Turkish had clearly arrived very late and this would have been known to the air traffic controllers and the ground coordinators many hours beforehand, I fail to understand why Turkish could not have been assigned a nearby empty bay to unload its passengers and cargo. I am sure all the passengers waiting to fly to Taipei on the incoming China Airlines plane wondered the same thing!

I arrived back at BKK around 4:30 pm on Sunday. Despite there being many empty bays, my China Airlines flight had to circle around part of the airport because, we were informed our bay was waiting for a jet to vacate it. 20 minutes later we reached a bay which had just had a Turkish Airlines plane pushed away to be stored at another part of the airport until it departed for Istanbul close to midnight. This struck me as virtual incompetence on the part of the airport authoriites. If a plane is arriving only to deliver passengers but not to pick up any, why can it not be parked on arrival at an ajacent bay - or any bay for that matter. This would leave the China Airlines bay - with a near full plane by the look of the lounge area - free to accept the incoming aircraft without any delay. I was really surprised that fast-track Immigration was more full than I have ever seen it. Immigration did quite quickly open more desks but it still took longer than ever. No idea why!

The Blue Elephant on Sathorn has been open for about 20 years. It is a perfectly lovely up-market Thai restaurant with great food and service. Definitely highly recommended. Rather pricey though.

The only hotel I know above Shinjuku Station is the excellent Century Southern Tower on the top floors of a small slyscraper overlooking the train tracks (although it is not a business hotel). But this only goes to reinforce the fact that to a large extent room price reflects the size of the room. It is not a case of hotels for locals and those for foreigners.

What a load of nonsense! Russians are in a position to determine who leads them - and who leads them into an undeclared war and a vast number of war crimes.

I am certain you are correct. In my view, Taiwan's Gay Pride Parade - indeed its entire gay movement since the end of martial law in 1987 - has been so successful because it is organised by a group of committed individuals prepared to work within the system. The Pride Parade was started basically as an act of faith by this group in 2003. It both worked with the authorities and every Parade has promoted a different social message. Thaland's early attempts at Parades were entirely organised by commercial gay venues partly to promote themselves. Unless and until it can involve many more ordinary Thais to take part in the Parade, it will never be more than some sort of side-show - unfortunately.

I suspect not many will remember Jiang Zemin other than he took over the leadership of China when Deng stepped aside after 1989. As the obituaries have noted, he was a very different type of leader from the present President Xi. He even charmed Bill Clinton after Clinton had earlier virtually trashed him as a "butcher of Beijing"! He certainly seems to have been a man who revelled in life. A recent book about the tenor Luciano Pavarotti has an interesting anecdote which perhaps illustrates this. In 2001 the Olympic Bidding Committee was in Beijing making its final assessment of the bids for the 2008 Games. To coincide with this, the Chinese had organised a concert with the famous Three Tenors inside the Forbidden City. Until then, only Bertolucci had been allowed access to the Forbidden City for his movie The Last Emperor. Although none of the top leadership attended the concert, President Jiang invited the tenors to lunch the following day. After a pleasant lunch with Jiang, who spoke good English, the Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and the Minister of Culture, Jiang thanked the tenors for helping with the Chinese bid for the 2008 Summer Games. He then said there was a western tradition that you "sing for your supper". So he proposed that the tenors sing duets with the senior leaders. After Carreras sang something with the Culture Minister and Domingo with the Prime Minister, it came to Pavarotti's turn. President Jiang apparently loved the Neapolitan songs which Pavarotti had sung many hundreds of times. What he did not know was that Pavarotti not only could not read music, he could never remember words. So when they sang their duet, while Jiang was note and word perfect, Pavarotti could not remember certain words and had to resort to the Italian version of "rhubarb, rhubarb." That gaff aside, Pavarotti - clearly a very intelligent man despite his often appearing less so - claimed that having met many of the world's Kings, Queens, Princes, Prime Minsters and other senior leaders, he found Jiang the most intelligent of them all!

I wish we had a crystal ball to see what is likely to happen re Chinese tourism. The recent anti-lockdown demonstrations in many cities create a major problem for the regime. If they grow and spread to other cities, I wonder if the security forces will either try to quell them relatively peacefully or will, as happened in 1989, the regime will consider using force. It's a fascinating time in the life of the largest communist state. Perhaps ironically the World Cup has made the situation worse. Although China did not qualify, the Chinese as a nation are soccer mad. Nighly on their TV screens they see tens of thousands in stadia with no masks and no social distancing. Many will be asking why this is not possible in China. Re tourism, my view is that as a result of three years of lockdowns and the inability of so many to get to work, too many people have suffered such economic hardship that overseas trips will be out of the question for at least a year or two. I cannot see the regome opening up borders for external tourism in 2023. So it is likely to be 2025 before numbers return to anything like the 2019 level. The other worrying factor is that many Chinese remain unvaccinated. Those that are have most likely had the two Chinese made vaccines which we know are considerably less effective than the western ones. Many of those already vaccinated will be waiting for boosters. Without these, I can't see the world accepting planeloads of Chinese tourists.

Definitely agree. Visiting an onsen is very much part of Japanese culture - but as stated earlier it is not the same as a bathhouse. Many are located in extremely beautiful parts of the country and lazing in a pool just watching nature pass by can be exilarating. The etiquette is important and only takes a few moments to master. Agree also with a-447, don't be scared of the really hot pools. As he suggests, gently and slowly ease yourself in until the body is fully immersed. It's well worth the experience. Not sure I'd like a mixed hot spring, though. Too many older ladies, I expect, and they would certainly spoil the eye candy! 🤣

I have never been on a Vietjet flight that was less than 4 hours delayed. Never take it now even if the fare is lower.

Then why complain about it here? Are any of our posting members qualified in the various forms of cancer you routinely think you have? Unllikely, I suggest. If you think you might have cancer and you do not go to a doctor or hospital to have it checked immediately, you are merely trolling this Board - and I say that with repsect because I value some of your contributions.

Very few Thais will appear at public gay events in the country. This has been proven time and time again. The annual Pride Parade was stopped in the early 2000s because virtually the only participants were boys from the bars, massage spas and lady boys. Good on them, but you will rarely if ever see a professional Thai take part since Thailand remains a very conservative society. In 2009 the Chiang Mai Parade had to be abandoned when those watching it hurled abuse at the marchers and it threated to become violent. I heard that the Bangkok Parade which was reinstated this year did have a better turnout, but it is still mostly organised by gay venues rather than individuals. Even with few tourists taking part as the easing of covid restrictions came to late, this year's Taipei Gay Pride Parade had 120,000 participants. Clearly the vast majority of these were ordinary Taiwanese men and women, far from all of them gay since traditionally parents have brought their kids to take part. Bangkok's public gay displays will never take off until the culture of the country changes.

What a ridiculous article! On the one hand "Thai tourism may take a sharp downturn next year", yet later it claims "authorities in Thailand remain hopeful that tourism revenue will continue to increase next year." I accept that tourist numbers and tourism receipts are not the same. But the artucle is full of "could", "fears", "believe" etc. In other words, no one has a clue. I'd certainly like to see statistics of European travellers spending longer in Phuket because of the 45-day stamp. Presumably these are backpackers or retirees since most working people do not have much more than 30 -day annual vacations, if that.

So the truth - in part - begins to come out. Previously the Qatar government had admitted to less than 10 deaths. Detailed studies by several organisations and media outlets had put the number at far closer to 7,000. Since the Qatar government refused autopsies, it was clearly a deliberate attempt at a cover up. Most of those workers had to pay recruiters large sums to get jobs working on the World Cup infrastructure. With their deaths, the Qatari's have offered no compensation. The country claims the deaths were by natural causes such as heart failure or respiratory failure. So the families of these workers are left with major debts. Forbes Magazine and various other sources have put the cost to Qatar of hosting the World Cup at $200 BILLION! Yet, it refuses to pay the relatives of those who died preparing for the event even a few thousand $$. The Qatar World Cup has brought a new word into the lexicon - sportswashing. Quick to get on the bandwagon has been Saudi Arabia which is now hosting a number of major international events in the Kingdom. Along with its neighbouring countries, it owns several of the world's top soccer clubs including English champions Manchester City, Newcastle United and French League leaders Paris-Saint Germain. Emirates, Qatar Airlines and Etihad also plough hundreds of millions into clubs through sponsorship. The latest sport to be upset by Arab investment is the Saudi backed and financed LIV Golf breakaway Tour. It has lured top golfers away from the US PGA and European PGA tours by offering absurd amounts of money. Sign on bonuses of well over $100 million have been paid to Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson (Mickelson has been reported in London's Financial Times as having received $200 million even though he had previously declared the Saudis "scary motherfuckers to get involved with", that he ackbowledges they killed Adnan Khashoggi and "have a horrible record on human rights.") LIV Tournament Prize Money vastly eclipses anything offered by the other regular tours. The LIV tour is estimated to be costing Saudia Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund $2 billion - annually. https://www.ft.com/content/b5b110a6-9280-4d7a-a0b6-09ef2a423c7a

Still on the subject of the World Cup, where is the man who succeeded the corrupt Blatter, Blatter being an individual who started his career selling women's underwear and who has encouraged women players to wear much sexier, skimpy shorts to attract more spectators? Giovanni Infantino was thought to be a nameless bureaucrat who would clean up the game. A lawyer by training, he has consistently stayed in the background when it came to Qatar's not following FIFA rules. He did nothing to help the tens of thousands of migrant workers who worked for slave wages and many of whom died building all the new soccer stadia required to host the World Cup. He has said nothing about compensation for those who died. He has said amost nothing about gay visitors. He has banned players from using armbands promoting equality of the sexes by threatening those who did so with virtual bans from playing in the tournament. This is a man in the pocket of the Qataris.(In his 20s he could speak Arabic!) At his one press conference on the eve of the tournament, he gave a 50 minute monologue about there being nothing to accuse the Qataris about. Instead he claimed Europe should spend the next 3,000 years apologisiing for all the wrongs it did to other peoples on the planet over the orevious 3,000 years. Clearly FIFA has yet another idiot in charge. Whether he is corrupt or not, remains to be seen. Given the corruption rife throughout FIFA, I suspect @Olddaddy will soon place a bet that Infantino will be up on some criminal charge sooner rather than later.

What you describe was very common in Japan in the decades following WWII when communal bathing was virtually the norm. With its vast economic gains, most homes soon had private bathing facilities. There are still communal bathing facilities but they are relatively few nowadays. Hot springs in Japan, Korea and Taiwan are very different. You shower and thoroughly cleanse yourself before getting into one of the pools. These will have varying temperatures from extremely hot to freezing cold. Most guys seem to favour the moderately hot and cool pools. But once you have got used to the extremely hot pool, it's almost as though you fail to feel the heat and instead get a pleasant muscle massage.

None is exclusively gay - and definitely not the one at the expensive hotel. Occasionally you will stil see a father with a couple of his kids at Huang Tzu. It's rare in my experience, but I have seen it. And let me stress again, these are not saunas, even though most have a small lit sauna and a steam room. If you stay after midnight, there may be a bit of action in the steam room. But your problem then is getting back to the city. The subway closes just before midnight and getting a taxi is far from easy. There is a telephone line to a taxi company at the front desk (where no one speaks English!) but good luck trying to find anyone on the line to speak English. You will then have a long trek up a steep hill to the main road and unless you are prepared to wait a very long time for a night bus, you'll have a walk downhill about 2kms before you come to built up areas which might have roaming taxis. Your best hope is to chat with a guy who got there by motorbike and who will give you a lift back down the hill. Alternatively, walk across the bridge to Chuang Tang, make them think you have been at their Spring and ask them to call a taxi. They do understand a little English and I used them to call cabs in the old days when I patronised that Spring. That Spring across the llttle bridge used to be the one which gays patronised. When the ownership changed about 8 years ago, gays became much less welcome. Then there was one nearer the main road named Huang Ding (the one you refer to, I assume) which seemed totally gay oriented. There was always action in the steam room and in a darkish area in the level below. For about 3 years it would be packed. Then it was closed by the authorities because it had consistently taken no notice of warnings about the poor quality of the water. Much to the disappoitnment of the gay community, it never reopened. Gay guys then migrated to Huang Tzu nearer the bottom of the hill. Yes, I do like the crowd there. I reckon about 90% of the clientele is gay - most in their 20s/30s and in good physical shape. Many will go in groups but there will still be lots of guys on their own. Unsually chatting is not difficult as most will speak at least some English. I have several times set up meets for another day.

Personally I doubt it - just as I doubt the original "rumour" as printed in Thaiger. The World Cup is huge in Ecuador. That their national players could be bribed seems utterly far fetched. Like all "secret' arrangements, it would have come out and the players lives would certainly have been in danger. Not that Qatar has been immune from bribery on a massive scale in respect of the World Cup. There is no doubt that political and financial interests seriously affected the bidding process. Qatar would never have been awarded the tournament without a great deal of cash changing hands. FIFA itself was then a den of corruption - and may still be, although to a lesser extent now that Sheik Blatter is out of the picture. If not, how was it that many involved in FIFA itself and the bidding committee in particular ended up under criminal indictments in various countries or even in jail? Why FIFA departed from usual practice by awarding two tournaments in 2010 - 2018 and 2022 - instead of just 2018 started the rotten smell of corruption. That the first should be be in Russia was less controversial than the second to Qatar, a state with few stadiums, far from enough hotels, a tiny population for a World Cup and strict anti-alcohol and anti-gay laws. Encouraging the development of mass soccer in a host country has always been FIFA's stated priority. Hence the USA got the Cup in 1994 and it was split between Japan and South Korea in 2002. Since 2010, the world has learned some of the extent of Qatar's massive efforts to get the tournament when it should never, if only as a result of its tiny size, have even been considered.

I returned from my Taipei trip last night. Frankly, to anyone worried about covid testing and quarantine - forget it. The whole trip was a breeze. I took China Airlines. We had to wear masks on the flight other than when eating the meal. No preflight checks at all. On arrival, every passenger was given a box of 4 self-test covid kits. You are supposed to test yourself in your hotel on arrival and then every two days. If your test is negative, you just throw the test kit away in the enclosed plastic bag. No need to report to anyone. You do get a note with your kit with the number fo call if you test positive. I never did and so just threw it away. Throughout the country, it is mandatory to wear masks other then when eating, drinking, attending a sauna or hot spring. I never saw anyone without a mask on public transport or in the malls or when walking on the streets. From the accents I heard, there were a lot of European tourists. I went to two hot springs, the gay one and one more upmarket one in a top hotel. Only saw one guy wear a mask there - and he looked pretty stupid. For anyone wanting to get to the hot spring frequented mosrly by gay guys, the name card for the taxi is posted above. Since there are about 10 hot springs close together and the taxi will drop you about 100 meters away, you can spot Huang Tzu with this sign at the entrance. Price remains NT$250 and you need two NT$10 cooins for the locker. The Red House was busy at the week-ends. One bar had a party with this enticing sign at the entrance - For my last Saturday, there was heavy rain and with most of the bars being outdoors albeit with canvas roofs there were not many customers around. If the weather is fine, the eye candy can be spectacular! Prices for the mid to lower end hotels seem to be slightly less than 3 years ago. I had no trouble bringing guests to the rooms I had in two different hotels, but then I did not have anyone stay overight. I cannot imagine it being a problem other than in the very top end establishments.

Wherever the constituency, you lost - dare I say again? Gamblling is a mug's game. The bookies and the House always win. That's how they stay i business and make pretty good profits.

Neither! I have views on several topics including this one.

Another disgrace and another perversion of justice due to family wealth. He joins the Red Bull heir murderer and I am sure many others.

With respect, that's a dumb comment. I suppose you haven't noticed the disastrous times the hotel industry in much of the world have faced over nearly 3 years now. I have a friend who has been lucky to remain employed in Thailand but on a much reduced salary. He despairs that so many of his friends lost their jobs as hotels either shut or tried to stay open with very few visitors. I also have a friend in Vietnam who lost his great job at a Six Senses Resort for two years and worked on his parents farm. I'll happily pay a little bit more to help keep them and other staff in work and hotels back into profit. I frankly doubt if anyone is remotely concerned if @BiggusDikkus stays at a Bill Heineke or any other hotel again. Another silly comment given what the world has gone through over three years. No one has to stay at any Bill Heineke Hotel - or any hotel that has surcharges. There are so many of them around. If you think you're going to be left with a bad taste in your mouth, don't stay! It's perfectly simple. I wonder if @dscrtsldnbi and @BiggusDikkus take a similar view of the surcharges which have piled up and will continue to pile up in the airline industry as it tries to recoup its massive losses. Given their views, I suppose they will just decide not to travel. Then of course they won't have to stay in any hotels! 🤣🤣