PeterRS

I agree keeping a year's living expenses is not at all unreasonable. But keeping 800,000/400,000 in an account each year that you cannot touch for any reason and therefore seemingly until you die is surely a totally different matter.

A couple of years ago a new Director of Immigration decided that those retired in Thailand would have to cough up more cash for renewal of their annual retirement visa. Retirement in this case means anyone 50 or over. Prior to the change, there were two cash requirements for renewal. The first was to have a pension of a minimum of 65,000 baht remitted monthly with some sort of proof from an Embassy that you had this level of income, or you parked 800,000 baht into a savings account for three months prior to the renewal date. Thereafter you spent it but had to top the account back up to 800,000 before the next renewal. The main change affected the lump sum payment. The new arrangement was that you have to have 800.000 baht in the account for 2 months prior to renewal. This must then stay in the account unspent for a full 3 months after renewal. Thereafter the absolute minimum unspent balance had to be 400,000 baht for the next 7 months. The result of the new arrangement was that you had to keep those minima in the account or your visa would not be renewed. And I am not sure if you stood any chance of accessing those funds unless you left the country or died! If this has changed, I hope someone will correct me. It was claimed that this new ridiculous lump sum arrangement was to get rid of those who scammed the system by using crook agents and crook Immigration officers. Another claim was that it was to force retirees to make use of the Thailand Elite card. Originally brought in about 20 years ago with the aim of making it easier for regular - and rich - visitors to come to Thailand, it has now been expanded and has become popular with quite a number of those wishing to retire here. I insert the website below. There are various types of membership, but the ones that may be of most interest to potential retirees are likely to be the 5 year and 20 year visas. The cost of the 5 year one has recently gone up by 20% to 600,000 baht. But the 20 year one has been reduced to just 1 million baht. These are fees and so there is no money back. But for those fees you get a number of additional services like easy 90-day reporting and easy annual renewal (yes, that is still required of Elite holders). You also do not need to keep any minimum amount in bank accounts. I know a couple of people who recently upped their 5 year Elite visa to 20 years by paying the extra 500,000 baht (they had purchased their original cards a year ago when the price was 500,000 baht - the extension cost for more recent members is 400,000 baht). They find the service excellent. If the 800,000/400,000 baht arrangement has not in fact changed, and I was thinking of retiring here, I would certainly look much more closely at the Elite Card. https://www.thailandelite.com

From what I hear from others, the site seems to go down with some regularity. TIT (this is Thailand for newcomers to the board!)

I started computing life with a Toshiba laptop, because that model was what everyone in the company used. When I changed companies, I had to switch to Apple and found them much easier. But the constant need for new models really pissed me off. So I gave up the updating to see how long my machines would work. My desktop has been on the go for 9 years and still works perfectly well. Yes, I copy everything important on to a hard drive - I gave up on the Cloud when suddenly my iPhone and iPad suddenly ended up with almost a thousand work email addresses(!) - and upgrade the operating systems etc. when advised by Apple. It's the batteries that piss me off. I bought one of the original iPod Touch gadgets, uploaded all my photos and a ton of music on to it. The photos have recently been uploaded to the iPad but the smaller gadget is perfect for plane journeys and travelling. I never saw any reason to change it - until I tried to get the battery replaced. "Don't make them any more!" I had the same response when I went to Sony about 6 years ago for a couple of new batteries for my 2007 camera. I was told I could find them in Singapore. When there a few weeks later I got the same response. Eventually in another country I found clones which work perfectly well. As for the iPod Touch, a small battery pack is I suppose only a minor inconvenience.

This is not a news story as it first appeared last November. But it was highlighted today in a CNN website article. It was just a private kiss in an elevator in October 2019. The two men worked for state owned China Southern Airlines, China's largest, based in Guangzhou. One was a handsome 29 year old flight attendant who had worked for the airline for five years, Chai Cheng. The other was an unnamed pilot. Somehow that kiss found its way onto social media and went viral. Soon Chai was referred to as the China Southern cabin boy. Although homosexuality is not illegal in China, the current President Xi has been tightening up on homosexuality in recent years. By all accounts Chai had been a model employee receiving several quick promotions. As he points out, quite a number of flight attendants are gay but they do everything possible to hide this from co-workers. Now that he has been outed, they go to even greater lengths to appear straight. Initially his bosses told him just to keep quiet about the incident and put him on unpaid leave. Then in April last year he was informed his contract would not be renewed "for obvious reasons". In August Chai decided to sue China Southern for the six months salary he was denied. Although the case is not about discrimination, should Chai win it it is likely that a discrimination case will follow. Although Chai was fired, the pilot was not. This was because airlines invest a great deal of money training pilots. No doubt China Southern did not want to waste that investment. The case was heard in Court last November and the verdict is awaited. How the Court interprets the law is keenly awaited for a 2008 national law prohibits discrimination based on gender. It appears this has not yet been tested in any court. Since the incident, Chai has become an unlikely hero and activist for the LGBT community. Chai in an undated photo provided by him to CNN Chai and his lawyer in a photo released by the LGBT Rights Advocacy China https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/26/china/china-southern-flight-attendant-trial-lgbtq-intl-dst-hnk/index.html

As usual in Thailand, the devil is in the details. The opening up policy has still not passed through the Thai cabinet. There have been many earlier schemes assumed to gain approval which never happened. Also in this case, there is the major assumption that at least 70% of the local population will have been vaccinated with two doses before July 1st to result in herd immunity. That's almost 500,000 people. But where are the vaccines? Very few have so far arrived in Thailand, I understand. Another problem will be fake vaccination certificates. The IATA Travel Pass is still in its infancy. So let's just hope for the time being.

Thanks for correcting the title. If you plan a trip to take in the Courtauld Gallery, make sure in advance that the painting has not been lent out to an exhibition somewhere. This does happen occasionally.

This surely has to be the oddest photo from this week's news, one of the attempts by operators of the Suez Canal to dig out the mega Taiwanese container ship which was blown across the canal by a sandstorm. Any thought for a funny caption? I'll start. Anyone seen my shovel?

On April 16, Amazon will air a new historical drama, Leonardo, about the life of the great painter. It is now well known and documented that Leonardo was gay. Giorgio Vasari's famous 1550 volume "Lives of the Artists" makes clear that Leonardo was besotted with his male assistant Salai. Salai even appears as a beautiful angel in one of his best known paintings. It is also known he surrounded himself with good-looking assistants and pupils. Documents discovered around 1900 show that Leonardo was accused of sodomy before Florentine magistrates in 1476. Yet Amazon's portrait of Leonardo "drags Caterina da Cremona out of the shadows". The show's writer claims this was the most important relationship in his life. "But Caterina is a figment, a fantasy, a complete piece of tosh, invented by a 19th-century Romantic" who believed that Leonardo could not have painted female nudes without having slept with a woman!! Yet he was 57 when he met Caterina and she was a prostitute. Tosh indeed! https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/mar/26/leonardo-aidan-turner-amazon-prime-video-series-gay

i can beat even that. I was in a twin bed room standing between the beds and could still touch the walls - albeit at a bit of a stretch LOL Just to stay off topic for a moment, the price of rooms in many Japanese hotels other perhaps than those belonging to western brand chains is very largely determined by the nett area. So if you think you are getting a great deal, chances are you will be in little more than a broom cupboard. So do check very carefully. There are modest priced hotels with bigger rooms but you have to search to find them.

I'm also with you on the late night shows. I am constantly amazed that all have virtually identical formats - a host whose main job is a boring monologue and to crack jokes, an in house band, an audience of sycophants and a bunch of celebs promoting something, usually themselves. We do get some of these in Thailand and occasionally one will be partly interesting. I sometimes compare this frivolous candy floss with one of the terrestrial channels in Britain showing Queer as Folk in the same time slot two decades ago.

I have never understood the American love affair with daytime chat shows involving a celebrity host and a panoply of guests most of whom are promoting movies or books or something else. Perhaps living in Asia there are local language programmes of a similar nature. Thankfully I just do not know. What irritates me about these shows is they are so incredibly boringly predictable. An audience that seems made up of near brainless trained monkeys. Don't those watching realise that a studio manager spends a lot of time rehearsing these women before taping to get them into 'character' by teaching them to scream and jump up and down at even the most inane comments? When a free CD or book is given to all there seems to be a collective orgasm that is so fake. The games that are sometimes played are virtually senseless and the shows where lots of freebies are given out just one long commercial for the companies which donate the prizes. So, yes, I have seen her show but very rarely - maybe about ten of them over the years whenever i am in the US or a country where it is syndicated. I suppose everything is loosely based on Oprah's show which I did watch more often as it was screened in Thailand. But at least she sometimes had serious, meaningful conversations. Ellen seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Just my take!

One of the worst sights one could see on vacation is walking in front of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice and seeing an almighty monster sail slowly past on your right. They skirted around the Grand Canal to the cruise ship dock nearer the train station. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images Now these ghastly ships will be banned from entering the city at the sea end of the Grand Canal. They will be made to dock at the nearby industrial port instead. Most of the passengers on those mega ships only spent a day in the city buying cheap souvenirs causing people jams all over the place whilst dining on board the vessels rater than the city's eateries. Their value to the city was always questionable. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/cruise-ships-kept-away-st-marks-square-venice

I think you underestimate the Japanese porn industry. It is huge and represents a reasonable proportion of GDP. Visitors to Japan rarely see it, though, apart from the huge number of love hotels dotted around the country with the oddest themes both architecturally and in the rooms. You can tell that all the boys work at the site I posted if only because in another part of the site it states precisely when they are available. Some of the guys are students and so naturally are not available during the day. Other may have part-time jobs and also have limited availability. Some others may only be available at the week-end. Others will be taking part in porn movies and so might be off for a week or two. This screen shot lists some of the many dozens available today. But the example I cited is from one of two Tokyo host bars under the same management. There are quite several more which is perhaps not surprising given that greater Tokyo is the largest city in the world with 37 million inhabitants!

Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was a prodigious litigator. Criticise him and he would almost always fight you in the courts, whether you were an individual or a major corporation. Almost always he won substantial damages. At least two news media were banned from sale in the island state when they lost their cases. Now his son and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has again followed the example of his father. In November 2018 a Singapore blogger shared an online Facebook article crucial of Lee. The accused claimed he had merely shared the article from a Malaysian site which was replied to by 45 other Facebook members. The judge did not accept his claim of innocence. He agreed with Lee's lawyer that the article was defamatory. The blogger has been fined a whopping US$100,000. If you are planning a trip to SIngapore, don't express criticism in print or the internet of the Prime Minister or the government beforehand. You could find yourself a lot poorer or even in jail! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/singapore-blogger-ordered-to-pay-nearly-us100000-damages-to-pm-for-facebook-post

I believe z909 is correct in highlighting the cultural issue. Most northern Asians have traditionally been perfectly happy to attend public baths and be totally naked in front of others before bathrooms in houses became more of the norm. Even today, though, there are remain some public bathhouses in some cities. Then there is the culture of going to a hot spring (onsen) and being fully naked whilst washing all of the body before entering the variety of hot and cool pools. Some patrons take a very small towel to cover their genitals, but most often these seem to cover their heads!! This is true today around Japan and South Korea. It was even more true in the economically less advanced China. When the Japanese colonised Taiwan in the first half of the last century, they created a highly developed series of onsen that are dotted around the island. As Taipei has become a more gay city, at least one of the hot springs has become a magnet for gay men ranging from late teens to infinity! Since military service is still essential in Taiwan, young Taiwanese tend to have great bodies. It's important to note, though, that such hot springs are not saunas. They are in some sense more like an ordinary bar without the booze! Basically they are places to enjoy the eye candy, perhaps to enter into a conversation with some - many young Taiwanese speak good English - and make arrangements to meet up for coffee or a drink at another time. Very occasionally there may be a bit of touching in the steam room, but that is the exception rather than the rule, at least until around 11:00pm. Never been to one overnight. Oddly, given that more Chinese migrated to Thailand than any other South East Asian nation and a century ago Thai ladies frequently were topless, the western concept of not appearing naked in front of others has since permeated the culture. Even just going to the toilet, a Thai guy will make every effort to cover his dick from others!

Before then, some wore a jock-stop, others were totally nude. Those who were nude got extra tips as customers not only saw but could feel the 'goods'!

I remember Adam's Apple having both shows with nudity and the boys walking on the catwalk totally nude. This still happened although to a slightly lesser extent after the change of ownership whenever that was (must have been after 2005). Yet I don't recall the boys there appearing nervous about it. Might that have been because many were Shan boys rather than Thais? Chiang Mai's My Way also had nudity, although it later became slightly less visible under some sort of netting. Even as far back as the 1980s quite a few of the boys in the Twilight bar were not entirely happy being nude and did their best to cover themselves, even though the elderly queens behind the counter would sometimes shout at them them to reveal all. In Barbiery on the other hand the boys seemed to have great fun being nude and showing off.

Thank for printing the article @Lonnie @RockHardNYCthe number of free articles is down to about 5 I believe, and this includes reading of back articles posted on the internet.

The majority will not speak English. If making a reservation, you can always ask the shop which guys speak a little English.

Until about 25 years ago I knew absolutely nothing about this 15th century painter who was arguably the most important painter of the early Renaissance period. Today his few works continue to amaze me. I came across him completely by surprise. Good friends of mine had bought an old farmhouse on a hill about 20 minutes west of Arezzo in Umbria. One summer three friends and I went to stay in their beautifully decorated home. On our first evening, we had a barbecue by the swimming pool. In the early evening light, the fields stretching down were filled with wild poppies and the fireflies started to come out. Eventually we could see the lights from hilltop Renaissance towns far in the distance. Quite magical! Nearby is the town of Sansepolchro. We decided to visit the Museum. Here are several paintings by Piero dell Francesca as he was born in the town around 1415, the exact date is not known. I was captivated. Later painters were known for their use of perspective and light, but Piero's predated them all. To cut a long story short, I returned to stay with my friends a couple of years later. By then I knew more about Piero and there was one painting I was determined to see, The Flagellation of Christ. The art historian Sir Kenneth Clark had had named it "the greatest small painting in the world." It is located in the small Museum in the town of Urbino, about 2 hours drive from where I was staying. So I drove over. How to describe the painting. Small it certainly is. It is also displayed flat because it was actually painted on a table top around 1470. At first sight it seems lop sided with the figures on the right taking most of the attention away from Pontius Pilate watching Christ's flagellation by a Roman soldier on the left. Who are these large figures? Who is the young man between the older men? Why is Christ not the focus of the painting as would usually be the case around the time it was painted? Many theories have been presented as to the meaning of the characters and the composition. To start, I believe these are less important than the painting itself. Piero's use of light and the source of that light was to become typical in many Renaissance paintings. His use of perspective is far more advanced than in the works of other contemporary painters. It is his use of geometry, though, that marks this painting as extraordinary. At first we hardly notice this. Rather than my explaining it in writing, this video below goes into simple detail that illustrates the extraordinary geometric relationships within the painting. Unfortunately it is narrated by a man with a boring delivery. So skip the first part where he is giving some of the allegorical significances of the painting and its figures. Instead, start at 3'38" - and prepare to be amazed! As the narrator points out, Piero was a mathematician. I cannot think of any other painting where geometry and maths plays such a major part.

Just to echo a few points raised by @z909. Get the fun element back in to the bars by having the boys at least appear to be enjoying themselves. Bring back nudity, even if only for part of an evening. Since it seems OK in the girlie bars, I wonder if it the boys themselves that are too shy about going naked? Cannot agree more about Japan. Doesn't matter how much of an age difference there is, the boys are there to give the customer a good time. Everything is so well organised, as you'd expect. There may be no gogo as such, but you can either go to one of the host bars or choose from an amazing selection on their internet site. There are several of these and absolutely everything you need to know is there - photos of all the boys, the times they work, the activities they are comfortable with (top/bottom), if they will drink alcohol or not, if they have been in porn movies, full details of the system and how it works, pricing and an order form if you want to reserve a particular boy (recommended). If you order someone to arrive at your hotel room at 8:00pm, they will be there probably at 5 seconds to 8:00! Fees are all inclusive unless you live far away in which case transport will be added. And no hassle with tips as none are expected. This is a screen shot from one of the on-line out call bars - The full site is here - http://lang.dgdgdg.com/top.php#

The New York Times has a firewall and those who do not pay can not read articles. Can RockHardNYC kindly copy and paste the relevant section please.

If any reader happens to be in Tokyo and interested in art, there is a host of large galleries and many that are smaller. One Gallery that is a definite must-see and often not listed along with larger galleries is one started by the founder of the Bridgestone tyre company who was an avid art collector. His collection formed the basis of the Bridgestone Gallery which has recently re-opened after a three year refurbishment. It is now named the Artizon Museum and is situated not far from the Kabuki Theatre. The collection is not large but contains some amazing paintings by Monet, Renoir, Pissaro, van Gogh, Gaugin, Picasso, Matisse and a host of others. This is in addition to the Japanese collection. The sculptures include the smallest of the three versions of Rodin's The Thinker. https://www.artizon.museum/en/

Shakespeare's oft quoted adage "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones" is frequently quoted when a person has been guilty of dirty deeds. I wonder if that is so true of musicians, actors, painters and others. Earlier I bracketed Levine with Weinstein and Cosby. There is, though, a difference with Shakespeare's dictum. Levine must have conducted at least 100 CDs and DVDs if not quite a few more. Although the format may change, that music and those operas are likely to live on in time for many decades or longer. In, say, 40 years will anyone listening to a Verdi opera conducted by Levine know that he was a molester of youngsters? Will anyone watching "Shakespeare in Love" know that Weinstein was a serial molester? Surely by that time their names will have been whitewashed by copyright owners, recording companies, film distributors etc.? In classical music, we know that the Renaissance composer Gesualdo murdered his wife and her lover. In painting we know that Caravaggio was a murderer. In sculpture Benvenuto Cellini was even worse, murdering almost at will. Yet the art of all remains exceedingly popular and unsullied by by their more lurid activities.