PeterRS

Now what made me think your phone would have been made of gold?

The government of Ireland recently accepted a massive US$110 billion bailout package from the EU. Now I note from today's news that it has taken over its fourth bank, and is rapidly pumping money into two more. All this after Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland and many others had to be rescued with countless tens of billions of tax dollars in their respective countries. Has anyone heard of any banker being tried, let alone jailed for causing gvernments to collapse, countries go even more broke than they were, and the savings and investments of hundreds of millions of people come crashing down? So these poor bankers are losing their bonuses! Oh really? From what I've read, there base pay has been jacked up to compensate, so they are still way better off than people they defrauded. Madoff went to jail for 150 years. But thanks to claw backs by the New York bankruptcy trustee, it now looks like his investors will get as much as 50% of their principal back. What about the shareholders in Citi and RBS? If they had to cash out at the bottom of the market, they lost over 95% of their investments. Even today those stocks show losses of around 90%. When, I wonder, will those banker fraudsters be hauled into court and handed multi-year jail terms? I don't care what laws are or are not on the statute books. If there is nothing there, pass a law and make it retroactive. In my view these bastards should not be allowed to walk free.

Delighted to help. I wonder if hotels in the Rajaprasong district are still having a tough time after they had to close during the Red Shirt demonstrations earlier in the year. Only one point to be aware of. Chinese New Year is on February 3. I suspect rates may go up around that time.

To put the Kempinski’s rates into context, I ran a check today on the lowest rate offered on its website. I then compared this to basic room rates on the Shangri La and Four Seasons sites, as well as the lowest rates offered on agoda. I selected a 3-day mid-week period from January 11-14 for single occupancy. The results were very surprising and definitely not what I expected. Website basic rates in THB Kempinski: 6,715 - special advance purchase rate Shangri-La: 6.030 – special advance purchase rate Four Seasons: 7,950 - special offer of 2 for price of 3 reduces to 5,300 (this also includes breakfast) So the Kempinski is the most expensive. All rates exclude tax and service (17%). One big black mark against Kempinski. On the Guest Details page – the one before you press “confirm”, the total you pay is still quoted as 20,145 plus service and taxes. To find out how much you will really have to pay, you need to read the small print above and then work it out for yourself. Disgraceful! Total for 3 nights (incl. tax and service) will therefore cost Kempinski: 23,570 Shangri-La: 21,292 Four Seasons: 18,714 (inc. breakfast) The Four Seaons is by far the clear winner for rooms during this period. This is even more true when you consider 3 breakfasts are likely to knock you back a total of around 2,500 in the other hotels. With the Four Seasons just one BTS stop away from Paragon, who would be fool enough to stay at the Kempinski, I wonder? Agoda.com usually has very competitive rates. The real surprise to me is that agoda is MUCH more expensive for 2 of the 3!! Here are the nightly rates (inc. tax and service - but no breakfast) Kempinski: 23,571 Shangri-La: 23,517 Four Seasons: 25,623 So book the Four Seasons on agoda and you will pay an estimated 9,400 Baht more than by booking direct with the hotel (if you also want the buffet breakfast)! The moral is always check hotel websites and the booking agent sites before you book. Unless you are a points junkie, however - (like some we know ) - because agoda bookings rarely qualify for points.

Vergin' on the ridiculous, i'd say

Soft opening? Having erection problems?

The hotel has been accepting guests since the summer. From the reports on tripadviser, looks like they opened well before the staff was up to scratch. Even this month there are reports of rooms not being clean on arrival. A month ago one guest was told they did not have enough housekeeping staff. And one honeymoon couple was promised when they made the reservation "a bouquet of red roses, leaves of roses on the bed and in the bathroom; fresh fruits; chocolate/petit four arrangement (in heart shape box); 1 Bottle of Wine". What happened? "When we arrived, we found there were no roses as promised, no wine as promised, just a small cake and some fresh fruit." That post was made on 23 November. That's disgraceful for a hotel in this brand and price range. I agree the rooms look pretty small compared to those at the nearby Grand Hyatt and Four Seasons. Mind you, most of the Mandarin Oriental's room are also on the small side.

OK, you can have Santa. I want his "little elf"

Very good suggestion. This is the useful agoda page. It includes a detailed location map. I have always found agoda's prices extremely good for Thai hotels. http://www.agoda.com/asia/thailand/bangkok/airport/suvarnabhumi_international_airport_hotels.html?type=1&cid=1419127&url=http://www.agoda.com/asia/thailand/bangkok/airport/suvarnabhumi_international_airport_hotels.html&tag=61061a1e-b9ee-4575-8255-cfa1763d4cb6&gclid=CJ3bl5algqYCFUR76wodm0cQoQ

Alas, his one-time sex kitten wife is now 93 and in very bad health. In hospital over the summer, she was so poorly that the last rights were read. Although still with us, if her husband was reaching for the lube, it would have been either because it was a nurse in bed beside him, or he was about to start some

There is often a fine line between unsubstantiated gossip and other evils. As the late lamented Oscar Wilde famously said, "Gossip is charming! History is mere gossip, but scandal is gossip made tedious by morality." We are wise not to cross the line and start taking moral high grounds lest we become tedious, I am sure you will agree. I had remembered that the quote came, rather appropriately, from the play "A Woman of No Importance". In this case, alas, memory failed me. It is actually from "Lady Windermere's Fan". This latter play, however, contains another somewhat appropriate aphorism. "In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst - the last is the real tragedy." Wise words,. Better, surely, that we all avoid such tragedy.

Lovely description. That must have cost quite a bit. If there is a request for donations, please let me know how I can contribute.

Remember that scene in one of the American Pie movies - the one where the young hero is watching a porn movie, can't take his eyes off the screen and reaches over for the lube to aid his journey to the happy ending - only it's not lube, it's superglue? Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband should have paid more attention. Prince Frederic Von Anhalt was in bed when he leant over to get the eye drops. After one drop, he quickly realised he had a problem. These were no eye drops. He had put his wife's nail glue into his eye! "It was dark and he grabbed his wife's nail glue instead of eye drops," said a spokesman for Von Anhalt. He now wears a patch following successful eye surgery. http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/12/21/gabor.eye.glue/index.html?hpt=C2 MODS: Sorry - posted on wrong Board, Please move, thanks

"Dear Unkie, I loved your gift. Thank you so much for your generosity. And that pink Christmas wrapping paper with the silver and purple glitter and rainbow bow is just sooo cool."

Sorry, wrong diagnosis. If he was watching a sex movie, his underpants would be off

You make your statement on the basis of two flawed assumptions. First, if my experience of several years is anything to go by, few retired gay people in Bangkok actually read "these Boards", let alone contribute to them. Secondly, a lot of expats are involved in community projects like helping charities. One I know organises groups to visit parts of the city and its surroundings to learn more about Thailand and Thai culture. Don't pre-judge a large group of people by those you might see in the bars or in other Silom joints.

I should obviously have waited a few years before making the trip to get the benefit of the new staircase! But now I can understand why the steps are so narrow. If my guide told me that, I forgot. I have no clue how to black out anything, that's how bad I am with computers. I can get rid of red-eyes and downsize photos, but not much more

The farang who told you that was wrong!

Where in Chiang Mai is that? May we know?

I was reading a newspaper in Starbucks on Sunday when I heard an overloud very Scottish-voice complaining to the young lady taking his order. As with Starbucks the world over, she had to ask some questions. He wanted a large cappuccino. "Is that large size?" he asked. "That's crazy. It's much smaller than in Europe". After the next question, he shouted "Why are you asking me so many bloody questions?" He then complained that some of the tables outside had 'no smoking' signs on them. I was hugely embarrassed, not only for the young lady, but for the cute Thai guy he dragged along behind him. What anyone would see in that loud-mouthed lout, beats me. Unless it was a plentiful wad of cash, I suppose.

Amazon in Europe has been amazing this year. I was late in ordering family gifts. When I read of the snow problems on Saturday evening, I quickly made several orders with guaranteed delivery by Christmas. By Sunday evening, I got mails that all had been despatched. Yesterday and this morning, I have had three emails about the state of each order which may be delayed due to the traffic, rail and air chaos. Immediate refunds are offered, or I can wait for a coupe of days and still have the option of a refund if the delivery dates cannot be met. The snow is not amazon's fault, but amazon's customer service is excellent.

Thankfully I did not have the humidity to contend with, and I don't mind even hot sun. What got me by the 4th morning, which we spent going round the main Angkor Wat, were my thighs! I was fine until I was going up those horribly steep and sharply inclined steps to the top level. Half way up, I realised that my thighs were seizing up! I stopped to try and gently massage them, but to no avail. I then looked up, decided I'd never make it, and tried to go down again. But after looking down, I realised I would not make that either without falling! So I had no choice but to will myself up to the very top, in the knowledge that on the other side of the structure there were steps with - relief! - a handrail. Once i had got to the top, my guide mentioned that one or two people fall and get killed that way each year! If he'd told me that before I started up, no way would I have continued! So I'd say to anyone planning on going and whose legs are not as strong as they might be - exercise those thigh muscles for a couple of weeks before departure, guys! Found a pic of the FCC chair backs (with my modesty intact) - on the roof section.

I thought it was kinda strange having an FCC in a place like Phnom Penh. (Odd thinking, since there must have been many hundreds of them in the city during the pre-Pol Pot years). So I went to check it out and have a drink. Having seen the chairs, I had to have a photo of me sitting on one, which my guide kindly took. And it was the same side view as your pic. Modesty prevents me from posting it. Perhaps I should follow your lead and now do so with only an arm showing, but that might inflame passions amongst readers ("My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist" - Katisha in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado)! Interesting that that tree at Ta Promh is now cordoned off. It was certainly one of the most spectacular. In the interests of accuracy, I failed to mention that my trips were separated by 8 months. They were not done together. So I had the benefit of cooler early December weather to explore Ankor. I certainly think older guys would find it more difficult to 'do' too many of the ruins during the humid monsoon period. Thank you for sharing your interesting pics. They really make reports come alive.

Reading the sad tale, it reminds me a little of the death of the actress Natasha Richardson last year. She fell whilst on a gentle ski slope and banged her head slightly. She felt fine and returned to the hotel. After an hour or so she began to feel unwell. Eventually an ambulance was called. But by the time she reached hospital it was too late. She died of a swelling of the brain. Seems Dae might have had a blot clot travel up to his brain as a result of his fight. Whatever, it illustrates the absolute necessity of being examined in hospital if anything violent happens to you. Maybe you will feel OK after the event, but you have no idea what is really going on in your body.

No idea about the Russian boat service now, sorry. I had some thoughts about reports in general and the controversy over did he/didn't he. OK. Does anyone not agree that it IS perfectly possible to craft a report by spending time looking through the masses of material available on the internet? To do that, all you need is a creative mind. You don’t need to go anywhere. It’s a work of fiction which can easily be interpreted as fact. But - and it's a big but - why would anyone waste hours of time to do that? Beats me. Looking back over this Board and a couple of others, virtually all reports stand out as pretty obviously written by the authors, in my view. How to tell? The little details that make it so personal. I came across a fantastic series of reports here about a long bicycle ride around Thailand GT did with some Thai friends.The title is "An Adventure Across Thailand on a Bicycle". It’s packed with descriptions of what heppened each day, the people they met, the little accidents, where they stayed and how they felt. All illustrated with dozens of insightfull photos. That could only have been written by GT who posted it. It’s hard to find one report that I’d say – wow, that doesn’t read like a real report. Beachlover’s report is long and full of specifics. It tells what he saw, where he stayed, what he did etc. I have no clue about the gay scene now compared to 6 years ago. You can pick holes in almost any report, but nothing in this report stands out as indicating that anything was made up. Moses, a regular visitor, pointed out there are some small inconsistencies. Who doesn’t make the odd mistake when recollecting things, unless you’ve written a daily journal? I read somewhere on another site than one poster even lists his exact expenses in a daily ‘what I did’ record! That’s weird in my view. Like, who makes lists of the price of every tuk-tuk ride or the beers he had in each bar??? Being totally subjectve, the only other thought I had is a lack of more personal ‘feelings’. I was blown away by the temples at Siem Reap. It’s all so much vaster than I expected, and they are all so different and unique. Also, nothing about time of visit and what time of year? I think there must be quite a difference if you go in the monsoon season, when it must be horribly hot and sticky for clambouring over all the temples. Only my view! Others may be more interested in what ordinary folks do and nightlife. Last point. It’s so easy to upload photos here. In such a scenic country as Cambodia, everyone I saw was clicking away madly. If there are doubters around, wouldn’t attaching photos be the best way to knock them out of court? (Yeah, I know, thousands of photos can also be found on the internet and so how do you know photos are genuine? I’m sure there’s a way, but I'm a computer illiterate and don’t know it!) But, hey, everyone’s writing style is different. Celebrate diversity.