PeterRS

I was only in that part of Vietnam for 10 days in 2020 before everything closed due to covid. But the moment I arrived in Da Nang airport, I had approaches from the apps. As I was going immediately to Hoi An and then Hue, I was not able to meet a guy in Da Nang for a week. But he was amazing. Mid-20s, liked westerners, knew the area like the back of his hand, spoke near perfect English, wanted to come to the hotel - and we had a great time for my remaining two days. He even came to the airport to see me off! He was not an MB. Just a guy trying to run a small business who enjoyed sex. He wanted no money. All I bought were coffees, simple lunches and dinners and some lovely cocktails in the hotel bar. If there was a long term visa, I am certain I would really enjoy retiring to that area of Vietnam. But I would plan on learning some basic Vietnamese.

35 or so years ago I would have jumped at the chance of selecting Bali as a retirement haven. That was before I saw the unfortunate changes as a result of mass tourism in 2005. It remains a beautiful island with over 4 million inhabitants but only has around 30,000 foreigners living there - and some of these are from Java. That's a big enough pool to make friends. But selecting the place to find an apartment or small Balinese house for me would be the most difficult. Personally I would loathe Denpasar, Nusa Dua or Kuta and other built-up areas as a place to which to retire. I'm also not sure i would like to be on an island that annually attracts nearly 6.5 million tourists with the majority coming from Australia (by far the largest) and India.

Land ownership is different in the cities and the countryside. In the former, ownership of land is not possible. In the latter, special land cooperatives own the land. In effect, though, Chinese can only own the property built on the land. I believe the lease period for residential ownership is 70 years. Property prices have skyrocketed since the government started to permit private ownership only around 30 years ago. Gradually that set off a boom in home construction, one which spiralled out of control partly due to demand. House prices in some cities are now mega. An 80-square meter apartment near the centre of Shanghai will set you back US$886,000. Down payment requirements can often be s high as 80%. On the outskirts of the city, the price plummets to $200,000. In Beijing, the average price across the whole city is around $310,000. Perhaps surprisingly, mortagages are not popular in China. Only 18% of buyers tap into the mortgage market. In 2012 whereas the Chinese mortgage to GDP ratio was just 15%, in the USA it was 81.4%. Even though average wages in China are well below western standards, families and other social connections provide the finance to enable home purchase. Despite their high price, something like 90% of the country own their own homes. One reason is that Chinese are among the highest savers in the world with a savings rate that equates to almost 50% of GDP. This is one target of President Xi's government as it tries to get the economy back on track. Get people out and spend more of their savings! https://breznikar.com/article/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes/1781

I'm not sure he ever had much of what we would term sense. As I have written in another thread, his mentor from the time he started in business was the ghastly Roy Cohn. Described as "one of the most reviled men in American history," Cohn was a lawyer of the most notorious kind, a tax cheat and swindler who counted mobsters as well as Presidents among his clients. He was indicted four times for stock-swindling, obstructing justice, perjury, bribery, conspiracy, extortion, blackmail and filing false reports. Three times he was aquitted and the fourth ended in a mistrial "giving him a kind of sneering, sinister sheen of invulnerability." Trump is following the Cohn playbook virtually to the letter. "Deflect and distract, never give in, never admit fault, lie and attack, lie and attack, publicity no matter what, win no matter what, all underpinned by a deep, prove-me-wrong belief in the power of chaos and fear."

As mentioned in an earlier post, remember that May 1-5 was the main Chinese Spring holiday. I doubt if you will see anything like that number of Chinese tourists next week-end. We also have to remember that the Chinese economy is facing huge problems. The real estate market is a total disaster area and the government does not know how to solve this problem. Millions of ordinary Chinese are affected with vast numbers of apartments pre-bought but not completed and the developers are bankrupt. This goes for huge housing estates as well as smaller ones. Consequently a lot of Chinese are spending more on domestic travel than they usd to on overseas travel. And the real estate crash is not confined to China. The major Chinese developers expanded overseas. One example is the US$100 billion investment in Forest City in the south of Malaysia. Started in 2016 and hailed as the city of the future for 700,000 residents, it had the backing of the then Malaysian government. The developer was Country Garden, one of the top half dozen developers in China. In 2023 it defaulted on $11 billion of its overseas bonds and was declared bankrupt. Its total debts a year ago were estimated as $200 billion. Now Forest City has less than 10,000 residents. Many middle-class buyers, both Chinese and Malaysian, are saddled with unlivable properties and mounting debts. Commercial property sales in the development are all but zero. As all the media have reported, Forest Cty is quite literally a "ghost town". This is how Foreest City was advertised This from the BBC a year ago https://resident.com/real-estate/2024/12/01/forest-city-malaysia-a-100-billion-ghost-town-what-happened Youth unemployment is another disaster area, especially for university graduates. The last number quoted by the government was around 21%. Thereafter it has ceased issuing any figures at all. Granted, China is a very big country, but a big majority of Chinese are now worried about their savings.

When you purchase an Apple product you have the option of purchasing an AppleCare plan. These are often not cheap but they make repairs far cheaper than normal. I assume the Bt.3,300 would be the replacement cost IF ypur friend had purchased the AppleCare package.

Watched it and was mesmerised by it. Less by the machinations or indeed the unexpected ending, more as you mention by the acting and its superb direction. I do not think Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci have given better performances in their long careers. And I loved the direction, especially the frequent holding of the camera for slightly longer than usual on questioning faces which only added to the indecision. In another thread I gave an instance of books about Popes which I found fascinating - both by the Catholic historian John Cornwell. The first is "Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII" which argues that this Pope fatally undermined the Catholic Church with his endorsement of Hitler during his time serving as papal nuncio in Berlin and later as Cardinal Secretary of State . It remains a devastating condemnation of a man who used his influence to become Pope - even though during the war he did some good in sheltering Jews. A second edition mutes Cornwell's criticism, but only slightly. "A Thief in the Night", surprisingly has two different sub-titles in the version available on amazon - "Life and Death in the Vatican" and "The Mysterious Death of John Paul 1". With the world, especially the Catholic world, ablaze with rumours of skullduggery and even murder, the Vatican finally opened its archives to Cornwell in an attempt finally to dispel rumours about the sudden death of the smiling Pope only 33 days after his election. Cornwell found a plethora of instances of supreme and unforgivable inefficiency, but none of murder. I wonder if you have read much if anything about Pope Paul IV? This is part of an article I wrote ssome years ago - "By the mid-1500s the Catholic Church was an ambitiously corrupt and licentious organization. The Church had wavered massively from its strict, pious, moral, incorrupt principles. With the Renaissance almost at its height and more and more artists celebrating the male nude, one Catholic Pope realised he had some cleaning up to do. The decrepit, rigidly austere, authoritarian Pope Paul IV, tormented by rheumatism who had been elected to office at age 79 decided anything that looked immoral would just have to go. "Called by all who encountered him as 'God’s wrath incarnate', Paul was universally loathed. In his book 'Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy' Peter De Rosa, an alumnus of the Gregorian University in Rome, says of Paul IV, ”'His massive head was shaped like Vesuvius in whose shadow he was born. He, too, erupted without warning, spewing out destruction and death. His shaggy beard and craggy brow gave him a savage look; his cratered eyes, red and blotchy, shone like burning lava. His cracked voice, seldom free from catarrh, rolled and thundered, demanding instant, blind obedience.' "In what became known as 'The Fig Leaf Campaign' Paul determined that dicks on male nudes in the Vatican were out and plaster fig leaves were in. Not to be too hard (sic) on the male figures, the decision eventually extended to all genitalia, buttocks and woman’s breasts – all the fun bits, as one blogger nicely put it. Thus began the great cover-up . . . "Thanks to a succession of anti-dick Popes, all male statues in the Vatican and across European Churches were henceforth to become dick-less. In 1982 one Donovan Essen visited a newish building in the Vatican Museums where he was shown a wall of stone penises – over 100 limply hanging as if by a thread! Yet on his return in 2010 to show his wife this curious display, the exhibit had disappeared. When asked about its new location, the attendants professed no knowledge. Clearly this is a mystery which author Dan Brown could profitably take up. “'The Vatican and its Missing Male Members' might make an intriguing title!"

I'm not on any social media and so did not see the meme you refer to. As for sending shivers down one's spine, I would think someone is playing some sort of game here. The fact is that if found guilty of this law, the punishment is well known - up to 15 years in prison. Like it or not, that is the law. As far as I can recall, though, few foreigners found guilty serve more than a few months in prison. Usually their visas are revoked and they leave the country.

I think there is no need to be too sensitive about the lèse majesté law - other to avoid any criticism of it. The fact is it exists and we have to be fully aware of it. In Mr. Chambers case, the provincial prosecutors announced at the end of last week they would not prosecute him on the basis of the lèse majesté law. However this decision has also to be approved by the Commissioner of Police in that province. There are other lesser issues involved. Presumably these will be cleared up if the Commissioner of Police accepts the prosecutors' proposal. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/01/asia/thailand-lese-majeste-paul-chambers-intl-hnk

Perhaps Risibleus II

Not quite the same, but there is I believe still an organisation named the Long Yang Club with branches in various parts of the world. Mostly in Europe and the USA. In Australasia I note the website still lists Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Sydney wiht a branch being planned for Taipei. When formed this was primarily for guys from each country to meet up in a social environment - drinks and eats - with either visitors who wanted to meet local Asians or foreigners living in the city. They are not hook up joints. Many years ago I once went with some friends to the Bangkok Club which was then based in Sri Bumphen - very close to the Malaysia hotel. Most people there seemed to know each other quite well but still were very welcoming to us. No idea what it is like now. The name Longyang refers to a nobleman in the Chinese Zhou Dynasty some 2,500 years ago or thereabouts. A beautiful young man he was the Emperor's favourite. This became an example of the openness of the Zhou courts to homosexuality. Since then, Longyang has frequently been used in Chinese literature as a euphemism for gay men. https://longyangclub.org/newsite/directory

May 1 - 5 is always a major holiday in China. The other fixed date one is National Day when everyone has a week off from October 1.

Ha! Yes, the English do things differently 🤣

I think anyone barring a Welshman would have difficulty with the longest village name in the world - Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch! Bear in mind that Scotland also has its own language and as you travel around you see many towns and cities with names in English and Gaelic. The capital city of Edinburgh is also known as Dùn Èideann. It's of little interest but New Zealand's similarly pronounced Dunedin was so named as its early settlers were mostly Scottish and felt it was the capital of the south! In general though, I often find knowing a litte of a language - especially if your pronounciation is good - can lead to problems. My knowledge of Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Thai is very poor but I have quite a good ear and my pronounciation is generally similarly good. But this can lead to others in those countries who then think I can actually speak the language!

So? If you do not understand, then there is no point even tryng to enlighten you!

Now he has done it! Just days after saying he would like to be Pope, Trump has posted this AI photo on his social media site. Is there no depth to which this idiot will stoop?

Of course I perfectly understand that. The point is, when a poster posts what is an important headline, it is usual for the link also to be listed so that other posters do not have to go to the bother of doing so. All @reader's newspaper clippings and those of other members include the links. Why not this one?

I was once accompanying a friend on a smallish cruise ship around the Caribbean and then up the Amazon to Manaus. For dinner we were always seated with 4 others, one of whom was an 81-year old who gave lectures every couple of days on the Royal Family. I was pretty sure she made most of it up. Then when she learned i was based in Bangkok, she waxed lyrical about a visit she had made to Phuket - and then I knew she had made much of her talk up. She pronounced the island Foo-kay and talked about having been a guest of the Sultan at his Palace! Frankly I just laugh off such wrong pronounciations. But then talking of America, I freeze every time I hear the US National Anthem mangled by some pop or other singer. It's the 'national' anthem for goodness sake. But if that's what Americans want . . . Incidentally, if anyone visits Manaus, do try and take in a short visit to the Opera House. It was built by the rubber barons at the end of the 19th century and was refurbished to its former glory not so long ago. Opera companies used to make the sea voyage for seasons in Buenos Aires. The intention was that the companies would then move north for seasons in Manaus. That rarely happened but some great singers did sing there including the great tenor Enrico Caruso. The relatively recent film "Pavarotti" opens with shots of the tenor visiting the theatre in 1997.

Sadly yet another couple of non sequiturs! You query the margin of deaths variously quoted as between 1.5 and 3 million, suggesting that because an exact figure can not be given this inevitably results in my knowing litte about what went on in Cambodia. That, sir, is stretching belief to unbelievable ends. Can you find anywhere a definite figure of Cambodians murdered by the Khmer Rouge? Not even the Cambodians themselves know! Wikipedia suggests "up to 3 million." Britannica also claims "3 million". Facts assembled by Yale University suggest "1.7 million" but perceptively add, "Estimates of the number of people who perished under the Khmer Rouge vary tremendously." https://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Cambodia/sub5_2b/entry-2860.html Under a headline UCLA demographer produces best estimate yet of Cambodia’s death toll under Pol Pot Meg Sullivan wrote in 2015, "The death toll in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was most likely between 1.2 million and 2.8 million" https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-demographer-produces-best-estimate-yet-of-cambodias-death-toll-under-pol-pot As for Bizot, you have no idea if he was or was not "in a position to travel freely and talk to whomever he wanted." Are you aware that he was married to a Cambodian woman and had a daughter Helene with her? You have not read the book (as far as I know). So you merely make a supposition. In fact he talked to a lot of Cambodians about the Khmer Rouge both before and after his capture.

I'm sorry but I can find no post of yours which explains the source [!] of the Khmer Rouge. There is one about the "results" of the Khmer Years which were not accurate. If I missed something about the rise, I apologise. As for your comment I suggest you need to read the Willliam Shawcross book. He makes all the history and facts perfectly clear. Until the US started bombing the hell out of Cambodia the Khmer Rouge was a small bunch of Marxist rebels. That illegal bombing led to massive insecurity in the country, created a political vacuum and directly led to the Khmer Rouge filling it. To offer a more detailed account, no one would argue that Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge was a stable society. The departure of the French had left the country in a state of flux. On the one hand it offered a considerable number of the elite and middle-class Cambodians the opportunity to study in France where indirectly they learned about nationalism and modern society. On the other, within Cambodia there was virtually no formal education of any sort. When the French left there was precisely one school in the whole of the country! This group that studied in France included Saloth Sar, a young man from a land-owning family later to become known as the butcher Pol Pot and other leaders of what first became the Communist Party of Cambodia which, as we know, they renamed Kampuchea. Khmer Rouge basically means red/communist Khmer. In addition to what the French hoped they would learn, as earlier with Mao and his Chinese colleagues as well as Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnamese colleagues, they were able to study the ideals of Marx and Lenin. By this time, the teachings of Mao were also being studied. These were what shaped Khmer Rouge philosophy in its early years. After their return to Cambodia, the Cold War was under way. In 1953 the nation gained independence. The king abdicated to make way for his son, Prince Sihanouk. Although impressionable, he did much to modernise the country, especially Phnom Penh, and expand the provision of education. But the Prince was inflexible. He chose to spend more time and money on the cities, doing little for those in the countryside where the vast majority remained desperately poor. Then came the Vietnam War. Sihanouk's attempts to maintain neutrality led him to break off relations with the USA and permit the North Vietnamese to use a small part of Cambodia to establish bases and what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This infuriated the Americans. But Sihanouk switched sides again by re-establishing relations with the USA in early 1970. Within two months in a bloodless coup when Sihanouk was out of the country, he was deposed. Whether this occurred with CIA assistance remains open to question, but Lon Nol was installed as the pro-American de facto head of state of a military dictatorship. His rule was a disaster. Then came the illegal bombing campaign. Whereas the US was to drop approx. 180,000 tons of bombs on Japan during WWII, in one 7-month period in 1973 they dropped an estimated 250,000 tons on poor Cambodia. In total 2.7 million tons of bombs had rained down on 113,000 sites within the country in the previous four years. Not surprisingly, many land owners and farmers fled the countryside for what they assumed would be the safety of the capital city. By this time a number of Cambodian rebel groups had formed in addition to the Khmer Rouge. All were allied against the Vietnamese. Equally, the people in the countryside were utterly terrified as a result of the bombing. So why did the Khmer Rouge gain the upper hand? For the very simple reason that Prince Sihanouk from his base in Beijing had not only himself joined the faction, in a radio broadcast he urged his fellow cpountrymen to support them. The American bombing also drastically disrupted the amount of rice being cultivated. Within Phnom Penh food became more and more scarce. Having been welcomed to take over much of the countryside, the small number of Khmer rebels soon put their leadership's mad ideals into practice. They formed farming communities into communes which became increasingly inefficient. They blocked the shipment of rice to Phnom Penh. These mostly teenage 'solders' were then ordered to march on Phnom Penh to take over the government. This they succeeded in doing in April 1975, five days after Lon Nol had fled the city. We know that thereafter the cities were emptied. In one short excerpt from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site, we know too that prior to the genocide - The Khmer Rouge aimed to abolish the traditional family. Meals were often taken communally. Many children were separated from their parents and put into labor brigades that traveled from place to place to join in work projects. People were often forbidden to show the slightest affection, humor, or pity, and were encouraged to inform on each other . . . As Khmer Rouge rule lengthened, mismanagement created increasing shortages of food, drugs, and basic medical care. In a country that had killed off many of its doctors and took pride in extreme self-reliance, countless people succumbed to diseases that could have been easily cured. Hunger likely caused a bigger toll: By some estimates, between 500,000 and 1.5 million of the lives lost between 1975 and 1979 were due to Khmer Rouge–induced famine. https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/cambodia/khmer-rouge-revolution Finally, let's recall that Tuol Sleng was far from the only prison used by the Khmer Rouge. This map (taken from the above website) illustrates many of the almost 200 they operated around the country, in each torturing and executing their prisoners. All this only partly explains the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Sorry again @vinapu but I saw nothing about this in your previous post. If you know more than I, then please post it. I know I have been somewhat dismissive of your comments. I am perfectly happy if I have got anything wrong in my posts for these to be pointed out and criticised.

It's usual to insert the source of such a headline.

Also totally incorrect. The numbers of Khmer Rouge were tiny in comparison to the population of the country as a whole. Depending on reports between 1.5 and 3 milion Cambodians were killed. Not all by Khmer Rouge soldiers but also as a result of the frightful famines which resulted from their mad agricultural policies. The population of Cambodia in 1975 was approx, 6.5-7 million. So we can reasonably say that between one fifth and one third were murdered in the genocide. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the US reckoned the number of Khmer Rouge forces ranged from 30,000 to 70,000 in 1975. This tallies with the number of 60,000 quoted in William Shawcross superb and chilling book, "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia." An investigative reporter, Shawcross had visited Cambodia and talked to many survivors earlier than @vinapu's "expert". Sorry, but the fact that approx. 60,000 -70,000 mad KR forces could commit such genocide gives the lie to there being "both willing and forced to" participants.

A very good point and I am sorry I did not think of this when starting the thread. My list has 3 fiction and 2 non-fiction.

It is fact! It is not what I think! I am not sure if you read my post correctly. I did not think or pretend what I wrote! Bizot was a teacher in the country and became caught up in the Khmer Rouge monstrosity. He was actually there, he witnessed the events in the countryside as they happened. He was not someone who just happened to visit the country after the end of the KR regime, like someone you believe knows better! I trust completely what Bizot writes (as did a whole bunch of reviewers and other non-Cambodians like Bizot who eventually managed to escape from Cambodia during the KR evil only because they were not Cambodians.) "Breathtaking memoir by a young French scholar who twice managed to escape from the clutches of the Khmer Rouge as the Cambodian genocide was unfolding." https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/francois-bizot/the-gate/ Have you read the book? Have you actually read any books about what the KR murderers got up to in the country? I certainly was not there and so my comments are not personal - they are quoting from the book, just one of several factual books on the Cambodian genocide that I have read. Was the academic you mention involved directly during the genocide? No! So he commented merely on hearsay after the event - hearsay that was perhaps fashionable with a certain group of intellectuals but which was totally and factually wrong. This is from a CBS Report. Please read it. Khmer Rouge guards killed babies by battering them against trees under an official policy to ensure the children of the brutal Cambodian regime's victims could never take revenge for their parents' deaths, the group's chief jailer testified Monday. Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, said he was to blame for the brutal killing of infants as the commander of the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh during the 1970s. As many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been tortured there before being sent to their deaths. "I am criminally responsible for killing babies, young children and teenagers," Duch, 66, told a U.N.-assisted tribunal . . . "The horrendous images of the babies being smashed against the trees, I didn't recognize it at first," said Duch. But he admitted that after also seeing photographic portraits of children who had been held at the facility, he recalled that such things had happened. Duch said official Khmer Rouge policy dictated that the detained offspring of prisoners at S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng, must be killed to prevent retaliatory action. "There is no gain to keep them, and they might take revenge on you," Duch said, reciting the policy that he said he learned from the regime's former defense minister, Son Sen . . . Duch denied one of the grisly allegations in the prosecutor's indictment: that children of S-21 prisoners were taken from their parents and dropped from third-floor windows to break their necks. Duch told the tribunal that hurling children from windows would have panicked other prisoners, which would have run contrary to his orders. He said prisoners were supposed to be kept in the dark of their destiny to be killed. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/khmer-rouge-baby-killing-recalled-in-court/

I have never seen a contract for an aircraft purchase but assume there must be a clause alowing for delays. But delays of 6 or 7 years? I doubt it. So I would expect Boeing to be fighting yet more lawsuits from airlines to get these costs reimbursed.