PeterRS

Similarly I have always appreciated the facilities and service at BNH. I was particularly impressed when 3 or 4 years ago they offered 60%+ reductions for joint procedures (i.e. two rather than one). I took advantage of the heart MRI scan/carotid artery ultrasound and endoscopy/colonoscopy packages. Great value and I thought excellent doctors. That said, I have also enrolled in the King Chulalongkorn Public Hospital across from Lunphini Park. Although the public areas can sometimes seem like Grand Central Station, I have found the doctors excellent. Perhaps that is because most work there only 2 or 3 days a week. The cost for one visit is usually around 200 Bt. plus 50 Bt. hospital fee. The remainder of their weeks, the doctors spend in private hospitals, even Bumrungrad. Since I have had a retina problem in one eye for many years, they refer me to a Professor of Retinology at a fraction of the cost of facilities like the Rutnin Eye Hospital on Asoke.

Two suggestions, assuming you really plan to retire in Pattaya or elsewhere in Thailand. Buy a small apartment rather than rent. I know, this assumes you have the capital to purchase. If so, once the initial cost is out of the way, you will mostly only have management fees and maintenance to pay. Generally these will be a good deal less expensive annually than rent. I know some suggest, with good reason, that renting is preferable to buying. To each his own. Secondly, do what some retirees have done: find a regular boyfriend - and not necessarily from one of the bars. There are members who contribute to this and other forums who have regular non-scene boys. That then saves another load of cash. I have no idea how easy or otherwise this is in Pattaya. In Bangkok, as I have discovered after many years as a butterly, it is not especially difficult. On the other hand, if you are a butterfly who wants to flit around, you definitely need to factor into your budget quite a few thousand baht each week - an amount which, given the trend in recent years. is almost certain to go up over time.

Aside from Taylor Swift's concerts, it's been the hottest ticket in town. I'll say it straight out: "ABBA The Venture" is an incredible multi-million $$ spectacle as you've never seen one before. It has been running sold out in London for almost two years and could continue on - and on and on. Only the show's producers are considering taking it to other cities, principally in the USA, and there is talk that the London run will end later this year. Yes, they can transport it because the huge arena is actually purpose buit and can be dismantled and re-erected elsewhere with relative ease. After all, unlke a stage musical, it's only the 20-piece band and an army of technicians that also have to be transported. Thanks to George Lucas' company, Industrial Light and Magic, the megastars are not there. The Abba we see are state-of-the-art avatars of the Abba we knew and loved in their heyday of the 1970s. These digital versions sometimes look scaringly real. Lucas' company used no less than 160 motion picture cameras to capture the images. Before the show, endless emails will advise you to arrive early - as much as two hours early - to take in the atmosphere. Well, that was the one bit of oversell. I got to the east London arena an hour beforehand in time for a large vodka tonic, just one of the large variety of food and drink for sale. What is fun is to see lots of 40s, 50s, 60s and older dressed in sparkling ABBA gear all come to have a ball. And that food and beverage income along with ticket sales from the 2000 seated and 1,000 standing/dancing area tickets results in a reported bonanza of US$2 million per week. And what of the show itself? As you enter the arena, it all seems a bit boring. A semi circular wooden structure with a huge image of a Scandinavian forest projected across a huge area (yes, everything really is "huge"!) There is a buzz of excitement as the houselights dim, then a short pause before one of the loudest low notes you have ever heard. It makes the seats tremble and your gut flutter. Then begins the most extensive light show I have ever seen. It is all around and above you. In my time I have gawped at some amazing stage lighting, especially in Cirque di Soleil's "KA" in Las Vegas, But never before have I experienced anything like this. On stage - but upstage - are the four ABBA singers. I cannot tell you they were real people or not, but I am 99% certain they were real - only young doubles. They were just too far away. Soon we are regaled with a series of ABBA's greatest hits with the huge (that adjective again!) avatars on screens, looking and performing exactly as they did 50 years ago, their movements echoed precisely by the four upstage. "Waterloo", "Money, Money, Money", "Mamma Mia", "Take a Chance on Me", "The WInner Takes it All" and of course "Dancing Queen" are just some of the 22 songs in the playlist. Dancing was not confined to those in the three dancing areas. Many were out of their seats, arms aloft, their bodies swaying to the music. Everyone absolutely loved it! I have just one criticism. The four ABBA members came together in 2020 to re-record all the songs. The voices are still amazing, but the orchestral backing does sound too much like a 'mush' without the clarity you'd expect from state-of-the-art digital sound. But did anyone else find this a distraction? Not on your life! This was one show everyone came to enjoy and left feeling on top of the world. Amazing!

Like Emirates and Qatar whose joint orders for the now massively delayed Boeing 777X aircraft amount to over 50% of total orders, Cathay Pacific and others have been forced into an expensive retrofit of older 777 models with their planned new 777X cabins. Returning from London to Hong Kong at the week-end I was pleasantly surprised to find the 777 had Cathay's new Aria suites in biz class. These have a few modifications from the carrier's earlier long haul biz seats even after including the door. Frankly, I found the seat the most comfortable of any I have sat and reclined in. Even in Qatar's Q Suite I find when the seat is in the bed position with a thin matress over it I can still feel the metal join between upper and lower half of the seat. I then have to incline the seat slightly. A minor issue but one I hope QR addresses. With the new CX seat, the recline is seamless and very comfortable. And the linen-covered duvet is wonderfully large. The TV moniter is also larger, in a fixed position with a sharper picture and a large selection of movies and TV programmes. CX is still economising in small ways, though. Meals come without salt and pepper. Whereas the poached eggs for breakfast were superbly cooked, having to ask for condiments seems an unnecessary saving the more so when cabin staff are busy and these can take a minute or two to arrive. There were also no hot towels prior to landing. Still, that's basically nitpicking. In terms of the overall flight, I'd definitely take CX if given a choice. Re the 777X, the criticism of the huge delay in getting this aricraft into service is mounting almost daily. Due to enter service in 2020, Boeing is now saying this will happen next year. Sir Tim Clark, the Chairman of Emirates with the largest order, doubts even this is possible. Sources within Emirates suggest 2028.

I wonder why this is a "sad story". Making movies, unless with some form of government or an official TV station input (e.g. BBC, Canal+, National Film Board of Canada etc.), is a highly risky business. The number of successes a company may have had in the past is also no guarantee that the next one will not be a bomb. Just ask Disney whose recent remake of "Snow White" has had dire reviews. The Guardian's review headline today states "Exhaustingly Awful". Those of us of a certain age will recall "Heaven's Gate" whose loss adjusted for inflation is US$155 million. More recently the ghastly movie version of Lloyd Webber's hugely suggessful stage musical "Cats" and Spielberg's far better version of "West Side Story" have each so far lost well over $100 million. As that Nation article suggests, Thai fIlm makers and their investors seem to have been paying insufficient attention to the market. Unless you do your research and give the audience either what they want or you have the budget to persuade them that your movie is what they want to see, a movie is far more likely to bomb at the box office. Naturally there have been exceptions. Think of 1999 the indie movie "The Blair Witch Project" whose initial cost of around $60,000 saw a return of $248 million.The most recent "Call Me By Your Nam" was financially successful principally because of its appeal to a particular market and a tight budget of £3.4 million. Against that cinema revenues to date are $41 million with more expected to come from licensing and TV sales. Exceptions, though, are the rule! 😮‍💨

Sadly I cannot see either the Philippines or Vietnam being a position where they either stand up to China - or want to, if push really comes to shove. The Spratly Islands dispute has several countries up in arms, including Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei in addition to the Philippines and Vietnam. No doubt the claimants are far from happy about it, but China has already taken many measures to ensure that the others are going to have problems if they really do want to take them. Alongside China's military might and air power, the other nations are mere minnows. In 2016 a dispute between China and the Philippines brought up at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favour of the Philippines. Yet China has since then constructed ports, airstrips and military installations on the Islands. All the Philippines and other Asian nations have been able to do is talk - and strengthen alliances with the USA. The US wants to maintain several principles, including Nonuse of Force in Settling Disputes and Freedom of the Seas. So far it has done little to stop China's expansion on the Islands. With increasing US sanctions against Chinese manufacturers resulting in China moving many production facilities into Vietnam, I simply cannot see Vietnam upsetting that economic applecart by taking an even greater position against China re the Spratlys.

I wonder if any of us would have made that comment, say, 20 years ago? And I expect probably not. Then we regarded China as the next big hope for the world's economy, the more so as Japan was only finally coming out of a decade of deep economic recession. China was expanding at such a fast rate and everyone seemed to want to be associated with it. We knew about the one-child policy and the deaths of so many girl children. We didn't like it but we probably accepted the policy was essential to get the population growth rate of an underdeveloped country down. Just as Thailand had in the years after 1960 when the fertility rate was almost 6 children per family. It is now just under 2, but draconian measures were not needed. Khun Meechai and his popularisation of condoms helped achieve that. What is so different now is that whereas China's leaders were then regarded as relatively benign and were following Deng Xiao-ping's policies of openess and economic development, Xi Jin-ping comes along and the ghosts of Mao, the dreadful Premier Li Peng and the old guard come back to haunt the country and the world. The extraordinary thing about Xi is that he comes from quite a liberal family. His father was a pal of Mao on the Great March and was made a Vice Premier in the new government. He advocated tolerance towards Tibet and even hosted the Dalai Lama in his home. His son's hard line probably developed after his father was denounced when the younger Xi was 9. Yet his father was rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution and became the top Party official in the soon to be economic powerhouse of Guangdong Province. China's top leadership was for decades after Mao a major struggle between the old guard and the reformers. I have no doubt that Xi, like others, lobbied hard for the top job. His campaign against corruption at high levels of the party was popular with the public, but that can not have been the only reason he got it. Did the reformer Presidents and Premiers who preceded him think he would continue their policies? Who was promoting him? We'll probably never know. But in the world at large, I think few expected he would become such a hard-line President much more in line with Mao than Deng?. As the country's military has expanded under Xi, I do not know which Asian country could stand up to him. Perhaps Japan, but only because it is inextricably linked to the power of the USA. The other Asian countries are either too small or too weak. What will be interesting in the future will be Xi's position if anything happens to Putin. And when, as inevitably he will either through death or assassination, he passes from the scene, who will take over and will the reformers once again find a way to the top job? But all that is going to come too late for many consideing where they might retire. South America and even Portugal sudddenly seem a lot more attractive!

I agree with much of @macaroni21's reasoning. I agree too with @reader's comment about location. And I suggest they are related, at least a litle. Westerners and expats knew about Sunee from a variety of sources. Asian tourists, for the most part, had no clue about it. I don't read Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asian gay blogsites but in one English one based in Singapore I rarely ever read about Sunee. This was long after the under-age issue when it was effectively dead to all but those who had experienced it or heard about it. Sunee's location was definitely not somewhere a newbie gay tourist would accidentally stumble upon. Did any of the gay venues in Sunee ever attempt to market their service - even to the usual western expats? They just assumed since customers had been coming, they would continue to come. Word of mouth! For example, some will remember that there used to be various free gay publications available in many of the gay bars in Bangkok - and probably Pattaya and Chiang Mai. I cannot recall when the last one disappeared, but most were in English or Thai - with one or two being in both languages. Was there ever even one article in Chinese about Sunee Plaza and/or one ad from one of the Sunee venues? If so, i do not recall any. If people do not know you exist, you have to be mighty clever to keep going on any kind of commercial basis.

I guess you do not read. I have NEVER written "the farmer's stubbornness was due to traditional Japanese values". I have NEVER written "the whole country was behind him". As for your comparison with Luigi Mangioni, there is absolutley zero comparison. He is not Japanese and he does not live in Japan! What I have written is "Japan is Japan and trying to divine Japanese logic is all but impossible! I have always said that of Thai logic which in many senses is different from western logic, but I think Japan is even more difficult for westerners to comprehend." Yet you continue to reject this and confuse your own western values with those of people in Japan. No doubt you will continue posting silly childish cartooons which have nothing to do with the subject of one Japanese farmer in Japan. End of discussion on my part.

Flipping through youtube videos some evenings ago, I came across this wonderful version of the haunting Albinoni Adagio. It is sung by a choir named Libera which is based at one of London's churches. It seems the choirmaster enjoys taking short standard classical works and slightly rearranging them for the choir and a small group of instruments. In recent years it has become hugely popular, has a recording contract and made more than 20 CDs, and like the more famous Vienna Boys Choir Libera makes regular international tours including two to Japan. Libera has worked with many top international artists like Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras and Neil Diamond. It has also provided backing music for several movies including Shadowlands, Hannibal and a preview for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni is thought to have been written around 1708. I rarely enjoy crossover-type arrangements but this short recording gripped me and I immediately fell in love with it. The young boy who sings the main theme Freddie Mushrafi's mother is from Ireland and his father from Bangladesh! He has one of the highest and purest boy soprano voices I have ever heard. Don't be put off by the formality of the pic below. The choreography of the piece and the camerwork is extremely fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_(choir)

That's exactly the reponse I'd have given up until last year. But I had been saying for years that Thailand was too conservative a society to allow gay marriage. I sure got that wrong! Maybe this is an indication of quite significant changes in society as a whole. The younger generation which voted overwhelmingly for the new party run by Pita Limjaroenrat which was then disbarred by the old guard has. I think, now got the bit between its teeth for change. Assuming the party or its successor gets its act together at the next election, I certainly expect more radical changes. Legalising prostitution, though, may go a bit too far.

When police finally broke into the tiny, dirty bedsit apartment in North London, even the most hardened were nauseated by what they witnessed. Blood was everywhere. Lying on the bed was the body of the younger of the two men, his head cratered as a result of nine fierce blows from the hammer that lay on his chest. The bloodied naked corpse of the older man lay prostrate on the floor, dead from a massive overdose of barbiturates. The plot that soon unraveled is the stuff of murder mysteries. One of the two deceased was indeed a writer and a highly successful one at that. But mystery novels were far from his genre. Outrageously gay and totally promiscuous at a time when gay men were supposed to remain very much in the closet, Joe Orton was one of the exceptions. Hailing from a cheap housing estate, Joe had left school early, later proudly telling friends, "I'm from the gutter." He knew he was gay and he did not care who else knew it. Rough trade was his delight and he'd cruise around London's public lavatories and red-light districts, later filling volumes of diaries with details of each encounter. Joe Orton: photo Douglas H. Jeffrey This, we should remember, was a time when homosexuality was still not decriminalized in Britain. In 1953 shortly after being knighted as one of Britain’s finest actors, Sir John Gielgud was arrested for trying to pick up another man in a public lavatory. He appeared in court where he was fined. But he was also recognised by a newspaper reporter. Publicly humiliated, for over a year Gielgud was tormented by the fear that his career was over. He even contemplated suicide. At least he did not suffer the even greater humiliation earlier endured by Alan Turing, the brilliant code breaker whose work is acknowledged as having shortened World War 2 in Europe by at least one year, if not two. Having had his house burgled, he reported the crime and admitted the fact that he had had a sexual tryst with a young man who had known the burglar. Arrested under the anti-gay 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, in 1952 the judge at his trial gave him a choice: imprisonment or chemical castration. As we all know from the relatively recent movie “The Imitation Game”, he accepted the latter. With a criminal conviction, his security clearance was withdrawn and he was banned from his government work as a cryptanalyst. In 1954 he could take the shame no longer. He committed suicide. It took until 2013 before he was officially pardoned by the Queen. Subsequently in 2017 a new law was introduced, named appropriately Turing’s Law, in which pardons were given to many, but not all, homosexuals earlier convicted under the old anti-gay law. To date more than 65,000 pardons have been issued. Sadly, nearly 80% are already dead, including Oscar Wilde. Turing’s legacy has also been honoured since 2021 when his face appeared on the back of the Bank of England’s £50 notes. This, then, was the background to Joe Orton’s public displays of his own gay nature. But Joe did not care in the slightest. Then as the Swinging Sixties arrived, London was finally breaking free from the deprivations of the post-war era, a time when Britain came to lead the world in everything from London’s Carnaby Street fashion to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Were his diaries how Joe came to realise he had a talent for writing? Who knows? Eventually he found his way to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on a scholarship aged 17 to study acting. There in 1951 he met a fellow student seven years older, a withdrawn prematurely balding man from a wealthier family named Kenneth Halliwell. No one seemed to like Halliwell much, whereas the impish, no-nonsense Joe was the life and soul of every gathering. What Joe saw in Halliwell apart from as a cash cow is equally mysterious. Perhaps it was simply that the adage 'opposites attract' was true in their case. Even so, the relationship did absolutely nothing to stop Joe's promiscuous behaviour. On leaving RADA, both tried their hands without much success at acting, writing and then doing various odd jobs. They even landed in jail for a few months after a prank when they defaced hundreds of public library books. Although Halliwell had helped Joe with his writing, in two important ways prison actually liberated Joe. First he realised he was no longer dependent on Halliwell. More importantly, as he was later to say, “It affected my attitude towards society. Before I had been vaguely conscious of something rotten somewhere, prison crystallised this. The old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul . . . Being in the nick [jail] brought detachment to my writing. I wasn’t involved any more. And suddenly it worked.” The iconoclast in him took over, poking fun at institutions and establishments that had been almost untouchable in British culture, like the police, the church and the government. Soon Joe's superior writing skills resulted in one of his plays being produced on BBC Radio. A modest success, he then embarked on what was to become his first major hit. "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" is very much a play of its time. Kath, a bored middle-aged spinster, runs a boarding house. One day a strikingly handsome blonde young man calls looking for a room. Kath really fancies her chances with this Mr. Sloane. But when her younger brother Ed arrives, he too fancies this stranger. What they are not aware of is that Sloane is a psychopath who later in the play goes on to murder their ailing father. When brother and sister find this out, they come to an agreement. In return for not reporting the crime, Sloane will spend a few months bedding Kath and then the next few months bedding Ed. It was the ideal Orton ending. “Sloane” transferred to Broadway, where the subject matter all but ensured it would bomb. It did. But it was performed more successfully in various other countries. It was also made into a film after Orton’s death. This was black comedy with serious sexual overtones. Some were outraged. As Orton became even more famous with his ensuing plays "Loot" and "What the Butler Saw", one Edna Welthorpe was a constant presence in the letters' columns of the major daily London newspapers, bombarding readers about "the filth" and "moral disgrace" of Orton's plays. Welthorpe came across as a fierce guardian of public morals. Yet she was none other than Orton himself! Ever the prankster, he was merely engaging in a bit of self-promotion. He laughed all the way to the bank! One man who admired his work was Brian Epstein, the gay manager of The Beatles. Epstein was looking for a writer for the group’s third movie. One evening at Epstein’s London house, Orton met Paul McCartney. During dinner McCartney told him he had loved “Loot” but generally did not like plays. “The only thing I get from the theatre is a sore arse,” he claimed. Orton noted that at one point there was a knock on the front door. “Five very young and very pretty boys trooped in. I rather hoped it was the evening’s entertainment.” Sadly for Joe, they were a very popular Australian group recently arrived in London which Epstein was considering managing, The Easybeats. Orton agreed to work on the movie. Five weeks later he delivered the script. It was rejected. The group did not see themselves as Orton’s cross-dressing murderers. At least Orton received his £10,000 fee. As Orton's success grew worldwide, Halliwell's career went nowhere. Popping all manner of pills to keep depression at bay, he grew both intensely jealous of Joe's success and desperately afraid he would leave him. They took a long holiday in the very gay resort of Tangier bedding all the trade that came their way. Joe sunning himself in Tangier But it did nothing to allay Halliwell's fears. Joe soon told a journalist friend that he had started another relationship and would finally leave Kenneth. Did Kenneth find out? Perhaps. But his increasingly tormented mind could take no more. Within days he had bludgeoned Joe to death before committing suicide. It was August 1967. Joe was just 34 years old. Many regarded him as one of the brightest creative talents the theatre had ever known. Apart from his plays, Joe's life and success is perhaps best-known today from the biography written after his death. In 1987 this was made into a film with Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina and Vanessa Redgrave. Appropriately both had the title, "Prick up Your Ears", ears in this context being a very obvious anagram for "arse"! How Joe would have loved it!

With respect, I was not wrong. I agree there are stubborn asses all over the world. And with your knowledge and experience of Japan you will be perfectly well aware that every Japanese will know this farmer is being stubborn - and indeed very un-Japanese. It's a country where for centuries the group has taken precedence over the individual. But this man is not merely an individual. His case about retaining his land struck a chord with vast numbers of Japanese people. It was that fact that made the government back off. It's nothing to do with a "valiant Japanese culture", as you call it. Your asssumption in this thread has always been that the man should have seen a sort of western reason about the benefits of selling his land. And you are correct in the western sense! I have no doubt he could have held out for a humungous amount of cash which could then have benefitted not only his family for generations and the farmers who did sell their land. For you have to remember that this man is still not alone. He has a great many supporters who agree with his action. In 2015 he turned down an offer of ¥180 million (US$1.7 million at the time and no doubt could have held out for considerably more). The anti-Narita movement is the longest running social movement in Japanese history. As author William Andrews points out, the struggle is "not just about the airport. It encapsulates the last gasp of the movement, the very last concrete struggle." And this is a struggle that has seen vast tracts of land seized by the government, many clashes with the police and not a few deaths. One question I have never seen answered is why the government decided on Narita as the site for its new international airport in the first place. It was initially a secret government decision and the original plan was that it have 5 runways. presently it has 2 and getting approval for the third which it wanted in time for the 2020/21 Summer olympics consumed such vast quantities of time and patience it is still not ready. Major demonstrations started within days of Narita being proposed back in 1966. Nobody wanted the main airport to be sited there. Yet government instrasigence peristed. Flying in to Narita from the north you see dozens of golf courses, all built some time after Narita opened. Could that land not have been considered?

I suppose I can't really talk as I was a repeat monthly customer with one masseur at Albury for about 6 years. But what about the new visitors, the tourists making their first, second or third visit and wanting to explore outside the main Silom Suriwong gay ghetto? I think there are two other very basic reasons which have been discussed before. One exmpale can be found in the hot springs. There the Japanese have absolutely no qualms about walking around totally naked. Thais generally cover their genitals with either a small cloth or their hands. Seeing a Thai walking around totally naked is a rare exception. Secondly, though, cities like Tokyo are so mega that the chance of any family member or family friend actually seeing a son on a gay spa site is zero. Even if very accidentally they happened upon a site and in a very un-Japanese-like fashion decided to open it, they would again in a very Japanese fashion not actually "see" it. The ordinary Japanese are masters at seeing but not seeing! You can witness this all the time on the subway and JR commuter trains. At rush hour young office ladies will frequently notice perhaps middle aged men reading the latest porn manga books. The men usually make no attempt to hide what they are reading. Unlike their western counterparts, the young ladies will not be shocked or even try to get closer to see all the nude drawings. They have seen but they do not see. It is part of a culture that westerners find all but impossible to comprehend.

You've already made your point which we all get - and a couple of posters who know Japan far better than you have explained why this farmer has acted as he did and continues to act as he does. Why do you now continue to mock him with silly cartoons? Why not instead learn some Japanese and go to Japan to check your western views with those of the average Japanese so that you can understand facts and not continue to be childish about it?

Oh dear! A memorial plaque? That's surely going way too far. Who sacrificed what? People "gave their lives"? Come on, let's face facts. With few exceptions, they worked in Sunee and virtually all were there for one reason and one reason only - owners and boys - to make money. It was their commerical decision to move and work there. Would a plaque be there to celebrate all those who failed to make money? Nobody conscripted them! Nobody forced them into some sort of slavery! These people were nothing like the 140,000 Chinese, mostly illiterate peasants, who were sent by their government to work as labourers to repair war machinery and to dig trenches for the Allied forces in Europe in World War 1 and who suffered in ghastly, appalling conditions. In return China gained less than nothing at the Versailles Peace Conference with, for example, the German concessions in Shandong being handed back not to China but to the hated Japanese! The ordinary Chinese man in the street was outraged and saw this as an enormous humiliation. Demonstrations led by students erupted in China. I mention this only because these were to lead directly to the start of the Chinese communist party. Had China been treated in accordance with its war contribution - perhaps a few plaques here and there - there might be no communist government in Beijing today. That from Bruce Ellemen, Professor of Maritime History at the US Naval War College. I know I've gone off on a tangent - but an important one given the thought that Sunee should erect a plaque! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/surprisingly-important-role-china-played-world-war-i-180964532/

And how many times have we heard this. New scheme, great idea - but sorry guys we have not yet got a clue how to implement it!!

And that, in my view and with respect, is the western way of thinking! 😀

I just wish the government would make a slight ammendment to the rules for retirees here and on certain other visas permitting them to work for charities. Presently this is forbidden, even though totally unpaid. During covid I so much wanted to help a couple of charities doing superb work in the Klong Toei slum area. There must be so many retirees and people like wives or husbands of expat workers with lots of time on their hands and no doubt a lot of experience. Not possible!

Haha! I'd actually be more scared in Laos which is the most bombed country in history. For the Americans, the whole Vietnam War episode basically started in Laos which Washington 'experts' thought would be the first Asian domino to fall to communism. The covert war in Laos started in its northern jungle where the CIA built a secret air base at Long Tieng. For some years it was the busiest airport in the world and often since called the "most secret place on earth." But it was the cluster bombing of the country that led to its dubious distinction of having more bombs dropped on it than in the entirety of World War 2. American aircraft dropped over Laos a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes of every day for 9 years - 9 whole years. It is estimated that 30% of those bombs (roughly 80 million) failed to explode on impact with the ground. After the end of that war, 10% of the country's population had been killed but the communiststill controlled virtually the same land area they had occupied when the CIA started it all. Virtual stalemate. Those unexploded bombs covered around 37% of agricultural land and have since continued to kill more than 50,000 Laotian people, the majority children. As President Obama said when he visited the country in 2016, "At that time, the US government did not acknowledge America's role. It was a secret war, and for years the American people did not know. Even now, many Americans are not fully aware of this chapter in our history, and it is important that we remember today." Little wonder it is still called "The Secret War". https://abcnews.go.com/International/bombing-laos-numbers/story?id=41890565

A couple of interesting points in this article. 1. For long haul, ANA has chosen the 787-900 aircraft of which it plans to have 120 in its fleet by 2030. Even though it has 29 777s presently in its fleet, it has avoided the 777X, Boeing's latest commercial disaster. This larger model of the company's best selling wide-body has been beset by problems after problems. Testing has now resumed after the latest problem caused it to be halted for 5 months, but it has still very far from certification by the FAA. The first delivery of the 777X was supposed to be in 2020 but there is no chance of that happening until 2026 at the earliest - and airlines with large orders including Emirates (205 on order) and Qater (94 on order) have not only expressed their fury in no uncertain terms, they are also spending billions upgrading the interiors of their older models while at the same time not enjoying the fuel savings Boeing promised with the 777X. The two variants of the 777X are intended to have seating capacities of around 400 depending on internal layout. This should give airlines another 40 or so seats over the older largest 777 model with longer range and considerable fuel savings. In the meantime, ANA clearly believes that even with expansion, the smaller 787-900 with a three or four class capacity of around 250 or so works for them. As can be seen in the list of 777X orders in the link below, clearly without the Emirates and Qatar orders totalling 62% of all existing orders, the 777X would never get off the ground - literally! Emirates has now confided that the airline has doubts about Boeing being able to start deliveries of the 777X in 2026 with even 2028 being a possibility. And even if deliveries do start in 2026, stand by for the law suits which are bound to flow! https://simpleflying.com/emirates-dubious-boeing-777x-by-2026/ 2. For short haul, it has gone for a mix of the Airbus A321 Neo and the Boeing 737-800. Although it has a small number of 737 Max jets in its fleet, I wonder why the new order is for the much older 737-800 series when the 737 Max jets would have given the airline greater fuel savings and extra seating. Is this an indication that the public's perception of the 737 Max problems remain an issue for them?

Even in my many dozens of visits before and after I lived there, I rarely ate in hotels unless breakfast was part of the overnight package. Sometimes friends recommdended tiny restaurants virtually in apartments where a couple of guys had set up their own restaurants with excellent food at much cheaper prices. These places rarely accommodated more than 16 diners - and were often full. One good tip for those who wanted more than just Japanese food was to go to more fancy restaurants at lunch time. Many would have prix fixe menus far cheaper than one would pay for the same dishes in the evenings. Portions might be slightly smaller, but they were great value. Not sure if this still exists.

Japan is Japan and trying to divine Japanese logic is all but impossible! I have always said that of Thai logic which in many senses is different from western logic, but I think Japan is even more difficult for westerners to comprehend. We forget that for over 260 years Japan was a totally closed society, this at a time when western countries were looking outwards. The west has often had difficulty understanding that other countries and societies have experienced different histories and different cultures which result in habits that we have difficulty explaining. I thoroughly recommend anyone interested in trying to understand modern Japan to read "Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan" by Alex Kerr, published by Penguin Books. Kerr lived for most of his first 40 years or so in Japan and continues to spend much of each year working there. To quote one review - "Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons succeeds like no other account of Japan in conveying the tragedy of a scrupulous and well-intentioned people cursed with a headless system of governance." Kerr's first book written in Japanese Lost Japan won Japan's highest literary award for non-fiction. He was and remains the only non-Japanese author to win this prestigious award.

Merely to amplify one point in the above article. Sal Mineo finally came out as gay and was in a six year relationship with Courtney Burr III at the time of his death. He was obviously a deeply confused young man - as so many were then. Tennessee Williams, in one of whose plays he had appeared at the age of 12 and who remained a good friend, wrote of him after his death – "He cared deeply about so many things: acting, art, photography, life, spirituality. Because so many had extracted sex from him either in the form of abuse or desire, sexual favors and flirtation was a currency he understood and offered most freely. “Sal was not a degenerate. Sal was a gentleman, greatly misunderstood, desired, used. When he was murdered—underground and in the dark—rumors and speculation arose about his dark life and sordid associates. This is how we pervert homosexuality; this is how we allow ourselves to believe that queers invite their destinies, their deaths. A so-called merciful God exacted His judgment on Sal in the dark garage in West Hollywood, and on we go."

@daydreamer is correct. Business class passengers entering the Kingdom have now to go to the main Immigration areas where there are Priority lanes. I have no idea how these work as, being over 70, I qualify for the special Fast Track lanes. These rarely have more than 2 or 3 people queueing at each desk and you get through quickly. Fast track is available to a number of groups including those over 70, Thailand Privilege members and others I cannot now recall. I'm not sure how the Priority Lanes look if there are several aircraft arriving at more or less the same time. Presumably the queues would be longer than that experienced by @daydreamer