PeterRS

Who?

I would like to have read this, but I am not on Facebook and for a variety of reasons will not join. Not all readers are on social media. Also, The Times is behind a paywall. WIth all respect - and very many thanks for mentioning this - I do wish those who post articles would insert a link that can be read by others without trawling through the web. Something like these 2 which I found today - https://www.danielmendelsohn.com/book/the-odyssey

From my travels around Asia, I reckon that is a very accurate assessment.

Just take the official airport limousine service - website below. You can not book but they have a lot of cars, mostly higher end models. Details of pricing are on the site and should not be more than Bt. 1,200. https://www.aotlimousine.com

The usual dose of daily nonsense.

Hurricanes hardly ever hit Europe. In the US they are mostly driven in from the Atlantic and so it is those states and Caribbean Islands that suffer. But in the USA wildfires are mostly affecting the west. Again hurricanes rarely ever hit the west and Pacific Northwest. Praying for more rain may help in dousing some fires. But global warming is resulting in it falling much more heavily resulting in severe fooding. All this is going to get much worse until world leaders do their jobs and get to grips with global warming.

32 or so years ago when the Narita Express started, I was in the bowels of Tokyo station awaiting its arrival. Being the first day of operation, there were little red carpets where the doors would stop and a bevy of smiling dolly birds ready to help passengers. With the ticket all in Japanese, at that time I had no idea how to interpret the information. Thinking I was in car 6, I showed it to the vivacious girl. "Hai", she said, indicating I wait by that door. When the train arrived I tried to find my seat. Someone was stting in it. Kindly he explained that I was not in seat 1 in Car 6 but in seat 6 in car 1. Knowing the train stopped only for maximum two minutes, I got out, shouted something at the girl and raced down the length of the train. As I reached car 2, the doors closed, the girls bowed and off went the train. I was furious. The only way I could get to Narita on time was a taxi. That cost around ¥26,000 or $200. Today it would be considerably more. On my return to my office a few days later, I wrote a letter to Japan Railways explaining what had happened and enclosing copies of receipts. I assumed that was that. Lesson learned - know how to read train tickets! Imagine my surprise when about four months later my secretary told me there was someone to see me. It turned out to be a man from JR in his hideous green uniform. After some explanation and apologies which my secretary translated, he handed me over an envelope with cash. It was all the expenses I had incurred after missing the Narita Expres, including the taxi fare! I thought - only in Japan!

Sorry error

I thought of including this under the HOT SPOTS thread, but that's a different kind of heat!! The sad fact is that even with huge fires burning in North and some in South America, it is Europe that is heating up faster. We've seen previous year's videos of fires in Greece. They're back - and again close to Athens. Some of Turkey is on fire. Spain is now battling fires, one less than 36 kms from Madrid. Parts of it's neighbour Portugal is also in flames. In one week the south of France has seen as much destruction as in the whole of 2024. And that year saw twice as much as the year before. The French Prime Minister has called it "catastrophic on an unprecedented scale." And still the world's leaders sit back and, led by the tyrant Trump, do almost nothing about global warming. In one breath he calls climate change "mythical," "non-existent", "an expensive hoax," while in another he states it is a very "serious subject". In 2009 he joined other business leaders by signing a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for legislation to combat climate change. In 2012, though, in typical Trump fashion, he reversed course by claiming climate change is a hoax "created for an by the Chinese to make US manufacturing non-competitive!" https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c8ryvxlr6dlo

I think this is relatively common, unfortunately. I just checked a fare for mid-September on a popular inter-Britain route where BA has the monopoly. Of 15 daily flights, the one way fare ranges from £53 to £226. But the return sector is even more expensive ranging from £79 to £253. And that is without baggage or seat selection. With the most expensive return, you are close to the price for a return ticket London to Bangkok - 350 miles round tip v. 6,000 miles round trip. Hardly makes any sense!

I would recommend you try one of the Siam Roads Guides based in Ho Chi Minh. There are three currently listed as being based in HCM and I am sure at least one will be happy to travel down to meet you and show you around. Vietnamese friends tell me that Can Tho can be quite gay. https://siamroads.com/#Vietnam

@Keithambrose and other other poster tried that trick in other posts which the moderator promptly threw out. Seems that will be the destination of this one. Danang and the entire area from Hoi An in the south to Hue in the north is perfectly beautiful. Sadly my Vietnam friends tell me you are not going to find any beach resort in Vietnam with the sort of beach gay community like Pattaya. Besides you have the Vietnam visa issue to consider.

Does that mean that Le Continental still exists?

And @Department_Of_Agriculture clearly knows virtually nothing about Myanmar. The majority Bamars in Myanmar number roughly 68% of the population. The Rohingya population less than 2%. @12is12 is perfectly correct when he claimed that the vast majority in Myanmar did not object to the genocide in Rakhine State. That is precisely why Aung San Suu Kyi refused to criticise the army junta when she appeared before the World Court. The majority Bamar population have never liked the Rohingya in the south west of the country largely because it is a legacy of British colonialism when they imported vast numbers of Muslim Indians from Bengal, many of whom then took over jobs occupied beforehand by Burmese, always at lower wages. As for Israel, @Department_Of_Agriculture is the one being hypocritical. He drags up a post made in November 2022. Yet he fails to point out that this was made 11 months BEFORE the Hamas incursion into Israel and Israel's subsequent genocide in Gaza. Hypocrite!

https://www.thaiembassy.com/travel-to-thailand/travel-to-thailand-from-australia It's perfectly simple! And you could have just checked on the internet before posting.

Towards the end of this post, there are some good recommendations. Mango Tree has been going for decades and consitently serves fine Thai cuisine at a sort of mid-price range (much more expensive than Foodland though). Ruen Urai has been praised several times in this forum and I have eaten there at least two dozen times over the last ten years. But you have to be a bit careful. First it is a good bit more expensive than Mango Tree (at least double). Second, avoid it if they try to palm you off with a table upstairs, Absolutely dull and boring atmosphere with no windows. Downstairs is a delight, but be 100% sure of your booking. Last year several days in advance I booked for dinner with a fellow poster. It was all confirmed, as was downstairs. When we arrived, we were told we'd have to sit outside as they had booked in a party occupying the entire lower floor (which is not big). Clearly that had only been booked after I had made my booking and they had not even had the decency to call back and tell me. We walked away in disgust. I have not been back. A restaurant with their prices has to have good service, in my book! But the ridiculous comments about Burmese and Vietnamese eating habits are so vastly overexaggerated they should be completely discarded. Both countries have experienced horrific decades-long wars - in Vietnam thanks to a gruesome illegal American war and in Myanmar nearly eight decades of appalling military rule thanks in large part to on-going disasters resulting from British colonialism. In those days, finding anything to eat for much of the population was far from easy. Now, in Vietnam, the government is attempting to get rid of eating cat meat and most of the population is also against it. Assuming that 70% of MBs eat it is utter nonsense.

Bascially yes but only as far as this condo in this quiet residential part of Bangkok is concerned. There are very few westerners in this 50-unit condo. The "western" agent is more used to handling considerably more up-market properties.

I can recall for about 3 years Trivago blitzed TV channels around Asia with advertisements offering all manner of promises. As @TMax mentions they were also taken to court in this part of the world. Thankfully I cannot recall a Trivago ad appearing in the last 4 or 5 years. I have found in Asia that some hotels do not want you to book with them. Almost on the same topic, hotels booked direct sometimes do not deliver what is promised. I had a very bad experience about 20 years ago with the Hyatt in Shinjuku in Tokyo. Having stayed there before, I knew the hotel had quite a large number of end rooms that were much more suited to a small business hotel. Not listed on the hotel's website, they were less than half the size of the basic standard rooms and double beds were basically singles. So I called to book their standard room for three nghts stressing "standard". When I arrived, I was shocked to find myself in one of the tiny rooms. When I queried at the front desk and explained I had paid for the standard rooms, I just got fobbed off to the night manager who spouted some gobbledygook that I totally failed to understand. The next morning I insisted I meet with the general manager, a Mr. Fujita. Once again the discussion went round in circles - i.e. almost nowhere. But I did pick up a nugget that these rooms were offered primarily to walk in Japanese guests and those in groups - I was with two others. They then leaked that the price of these rooms was only about $5 less than the much larger standard rooms. Being somewhat stubborn, I was absolutely not prepared to let the matter rest. So I wrote to Hyatt head office in Chicago with details of my encounters. I was then very surprised to get a mail asking when someone could call me. During that call it was pointed out that head office had absolutely no idea about these tiny rooms and were appalled to hear about them. Apparently there were around 98! An executive would be in Tokyo a couple of weeks later and would make an inspection. In the meantime, I was offered three free nights at any Hyatt and a guaranteed upgrade to a suite on that next visit! The upshot was I actually was able to use those three free nights twice! A year later I had a bad experience at the somewhat ageing Hyatt in Honolulu - mostly to do with the travel desk and being sent on some wild goose chase that wasted half a day. Again I complained. The manager then reposted the three nights back to my account! I finally used them a couple of years later at the lovely Hyatt in Kyoto! So when booking with a hotel now, I want a detailed booking slip with exact details of the room and where it fits in with the hotel's other room sizes. Finally airines. Yes, I do mostly book direct. But shopping around 18 months ago in Europe, I had to make a quick return trip from Edinburgh to Zurich. Swiss and BA were in the £500 range. Checking booking agents, I found flights on my dates and preferred times on KLM with one plane change in Amsterdam for £220. Six years ago I again found via a booking site an Edinburgh/Bologna return flight on Lufthansa much cheaper than other carriers. So for me booking sites still can have their uses.

"As a gay man, I feel like a wave of anger, and violence, and resentment is heading towards us on a vast scale. I’ve literally seen a difference in the way I’m spoken to as a gay man since that November election, and that’s a few months of weaponising hate speech, and the hate speech creeps into the real world. “I’m not being alarmist. I’m 61 years old. I know gay society very, very well, and I think we’re in the greatest danger I have ever seen.” The reference to the November election may sound as though the quote comes from an American. Nope. He is British and very much an icon for British gay men. Russell T. Davies is one of the country's most prominent gay screenwriters. Think Queer As Folk about a group of friends in Manchester’s gay quarter and you know how his ground breaking tv series changed a lot of views in the UK. He had originally titled the series Queer as Fuck, but the network controllers understandably had a collective breakdown. In an article in today’s Guardian, his concern now is that, as he suggests, what happens in America always happens here. Reform UK, the party formed recently by the dreadful lying Brexiteer and one-time adviser to Trump, Nigel Farage, has been gaining voters at a rapid speed. “As we look down the barrel of a Reform government, we, the gay community, the queer community, should be revolting in terror, anger and action,” he says. And he blames Trump for much of it. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/aug/11/russell-t-davies-blames-reform-and-trump-for-decline-in-uk-gay-rights

The primary reason for this was quite simple. No one would expect a purser to be able to fly the plane, but he/she will be able to unlock the cabin door to let the second pilot in. I believe this condition has now been abandoned as pilots have been given a second emergency code for opening the cabin door - a code that has a very short life span after use so that others can not make use of it. We have discussed the German Wings tragedy in several threads. We tend to forget that was not the first or even second case of pilot suicide leading to the total loss of the aircraft and all on board. The 1999 Egyptair flight out of New York has also been mentioned. But arguably the first was in Asia. Silkair was founded in 1989 and eventually became Singapore Airline's regional carrier. In December 1997 on a routine flight from Jakarta to Singapore, the Boeing 737-300 crashed into a river in Sumatra with the 104 on board all killed. The US NTSB Report concluded the crash was a result of pilot suicide. Others blamed a rudder malfunction. In 2021 Silkair ceased operations with its routes taken over by Singapore Airines and it new low cost carrier Scoot.

Remember the movie "Catch Me If You Can" and the part where the Leonardo Di Caprio character becomes a Pan Am pilot? Now someone else has found ways to get free flights. Over six years he falsely posed as a flight attendant on various carriers to get free flights on several others. In all he racked up over 120 free flights. To obtain such flights, the applicant has to access a special airline website and then provide the name of his employer, date of hire and airline badge number. During his free flight sprees, 35-year old Tyron Alexander claimed to work for seven different airlines and had 30 different badges. In the USA, to become a flight attendant and obtain an airport security badge you have to go through a criminal background check, provide ten years of employment information, dates of hire and a fingerprint sample which is sent to the FBI. Yet even after 9/11, many American airports do not bother about the Airport Security bagdes (e.g. LAX) and rely on staff passing through the air crew security lanes having their airline badges. Alexander was convicted in a Florida Court in early June and is due to be sentenced on August 25 in Florida. https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2025/06/11/fraud-flight-attendant-free-flights/84151108007/

I am like you. I post regularly and I always try to give an accurate account of my stay. I read a lot of reviews but increasingly find many of them all but useless. My rule of thumb always used to be jettison the best 33% and the worst 33% and just stick with those in the middle. Even now I find that is much less useful. My only reason for staying with Tripadvsor is they provide you with a map of the world and cities and places where you have stayed. I am sometime staggered that, largely thanks to business, I have stayed in so many countries, towns and cities around the world. Now I am much more likely to make my own decisions rather than depending on the comments of others.

Certainly no one just making occasional if frequent visits should ever consider buying - unless they have an endless supply of cash. Equally, no one without having spent considerable time in Thailand should consider buying over renting in the first year ir two. One point made in the video is the problem that anyone who buys can face: selling! Sometimes it's easy; sometimes fiendishly difficult. Two extremes from one flat in my own condo. For a dozen years living next to me were two retired English guys. For whatever reason they had purchased a large 205 sq. m flat with three bedrooms and bathrooms. To purchase a flat that large (my own is just under 80 sq. m) was in my view idiotic, but I just assumed they could afford it. Living on meagre state pensions, they depended on a large pot of cash. With the 2008 worldwide recession and interest rates collapsing for more than a decade, they should have seen the writing on the wall. They didn't. When they finally realised they'd have to sell the flat around 2012 to raise some cash, selling took them 3 years. It was way too big for most Thais and expats generally look for much smaller accommodation. Even when they did sell, they had to drop their asking price by 28%. That meant over around 12 years they had realised a gain of only around 33%. The next owner was English with a Thai girlfriend and son. After a year they found a another apartment nearby and also decided to sell. Within weeks they had sold it for a price that was 72% greater than their purchase price. That must have made the two guys who had earlier sold livid! The reason, though, was partly quite simple. The two English guys had gone to one western estate agent. The next owner's girlfriend had registered with three Thai agencies. The couple who bought it have since only rented it out!

Respectfully I disagree. I have on I think three occasions ended up with twin beds when I have ordered and been promised one large bed. Pushing them together looks as though they make a better larger bed, but you always end up with the gap in the middle, no matter how small. As soon as you cuddle up to someone you hit that gap. If the beds are on some form a castor, you can quite easily fall down between the two. Even if you remain on the bed, I find the dip between the two more than annoying! Trying to share just one twin bed in the tiny room of a Japanese business hotel - good luck!

Not at all! In Japan I have several times been in a room where if I stretched out my arms I could touch the side walls. Much more important to me is that the room is really quiet.