PeterRS

Well, I assumed in my earlier post that the snooker match fixing investigations involving 10 Chinese players would have been concluded long before now. Wrong! The formal deliberations only started this week, all the players having been denied for months any chance of playing professionally should they happen to be found innocent and/or not subject to bans. A year ago we were all marvelling at 25-year old Zhau Xin-tong's debut at the World Championships and how he would one day become world champion. Now he may be banned for a period of years. But in the meantime an even more talented and younger Chinese 20-year old has both stunned and thrilled exhilarated audiences at this year's World Championships. Making his debut at these Championships and with little success so far in his career (apart from beating a few established professionals), Si Jia-hui from a city just south of Hangzhou has had audiences, commentators and the sports' greats running out of superlatives. Many top commentators had never heard of him, let alone seen him play. He entered the Championships as a wild card who had played and beaten three other players in long matches in order to enter the Championships. As he himself said in an interview, he didn't expect to do well and only wanted to savour the atmosphere in the regular Championship venue, Sheffield's Crucible Theatre. Ranked only #80 in the world, so far he has beaten three highly established professionals (#4, #14 and #21) to reach his first semi-final ever. Over the last two weeks his sensational potting ability, his cool demeanour and maturity well beyond his years has been spectacular to watch. In his 33 frame semi-final which ends tonight Bangkok time, he is presently leading world #10 Luca Brecel by 14-10. At one time he was 14-6 ahead. If he keeps his cool and plays his natural game, he should win the 3 frames to make him the first Chinese to reach the 35- frame Final (played on Sunday and Monday). Like many Chinese professional snooker players, he moved to Sheffield aged 16 to practice and be looked after at Victoria's Snooker Academy. Victoria Shi was a journalist until she decided to open the Academy mostly for young Chinese players. With the young players unable to return to China during nearly three years of covid, she has acted as a mother figure as well as their manager. She has spoken highly of Zhau who she says is a "nice kid". Unlike the others, he has stayed in England since the ban, learning more English and practising daily. Perhaps he may end up being lucky. In the meantime it is Si who has the snooker world raving. Whether he wins the World Championship or not, he is now guaranteed huge endorsement deals in China. But no doubt it is that trophy he values most. https://metro.co.uk/2023/04/14/victoria-shi-on-match-fixing-suspensions-of-young-and-stupid-academy-stars-18610772/

AIrports in Asia routinely used to collect departure taxes in cash on check in. But for around 20 years or so these were eventually added to the ticket price along with a host of other additions and paid for along with the ticket. If a machine based system is reintroduced for entry, even of there were 50 of them can you imagine the length of the queues at peak time? And what of those who have no baht with them? WIll there be a similar number of currency exchange booths? Even then, what rates would they offer and who would want to exchange a small amount of baht just to cover, say, their first 24 hours? Then, would the machines offer change from 500 or 1,000 baht notes? If so, I'll place a bet that they'd run out of notes/coins long before the time came for them to be refilled. It would be a recipe for massive chaos. The problem here concerns "major credit cards". My Thai bank VISA credit card is frequently denied when travelling overseas. So I also carry two from international banks. But what about the mass of possible future tourists from countries like China, Russia, India and others who might not have acceptable credit cards? Does the AU Small Finance Bank in Jaipur offer acceptable credit cards - or even any credit card? Ethiopian Airlines flies into BKK. Does the Bunna International Bank have acceptable credit cards? So many problem issues! QR codes might be a better idea but, again, what about the time taken at check-in for the assistants to check that a work visa for a foreigner is actually a work visa? I know people with Thai Elite visas in their passports who have had difficulty checking in because the automatic check-in machines do not recognise them! Sometimes airline staff do not recognise them!

I believe poppers are illegal in Thailand. Not that this prevents some people sellng them, but can you be sure they are the genuine article or just a rip off? And if they are mailed to you, how do you prevent the possibility of the package being opened if the mail/courier company is suspicious of the content?

The Thai government is clearly in a real bind over how this tax is to be paid and there seems to me to be no even reasonable solution that will avoid a humungous mess. Understandably airlines and travel agents don't want near it because they'd have huge difficulty working out who need not pay. And what about those many millions of us who book online? Cash on arrival is a recipe for utter disaster at the country's main gateway airports. This is all so typical of Thai governments making decisions without first giving any thought to the consequences. In principle I'm not against some way of taxing those who arrive in Thailand having deciding they do won't need travel insurance and then leave hospitals with large unpaid bills. But then I wonder why I as one who lives in Thailand, is fully insured with a Thai insurer and travels about 15 times a year should have to cough up 4,500 baht. Better surely to make it mandatory that incoming travellers are fully covered by travel insurance - although I have no idea how this can be chacked in advance.

In many trips around Asia, I have almost always booked in advance, especially if I have made my plans some months in advance. As @vinapu mentions, a site like Agoda will typically have very good rates but it does not take much time to check a variety of booking sites. Recently I only once booked ahead and then discovered that rates had fallen. This was partly a result of opening up after covid and a special offer to boost occupancy. I contacted the hotel, made a bit of a fuss and they reduced the rate I had paid. Over the years I have asked some hotels about their walk in rates. If it's peak season, advance reservation has always been less expensive. With tourism in Thailand still way short of its pre-covid level, many hotels only have some of their floors open. And I read there are still shortages of staff which were laid off and have since found other employment. So I suggest it is best for now to book early.

I sugest you may be thinking of the 11 ASEAN countries. Here are a few maps. But this is a small issue and I am happy hereafter to withdraw.

After more than 4 decades in South East Asia, I have always heard of Taiwan and Hong Kong as being part of South East Asia! If you wish to be pendantic, The Philippines is further East than Hong Kong and roughly 90% of it is further east than Taiwan! Look up any map of South East Asia and you'll see both HKG and Taiwan as part of it!

A short anecdote. I actually had the pleasure of meeting Barry Humphries around the mid-1990s. A promoter friend of mine was anxious to present him in Hong Kong and had been in touch with his manager, John Reid. It turned out Barry was to be stopping over in HKG in a few weeks and was happy to meet. After his arrival my friend called him at his Kowloon hotel to arrange the meeting. Barry asked to meet on Hong Kong Island instead as he would be shopping that afternoon. The meeting was set for 5:00 pm at the Mandarin Hotel. Barry had suggested he describe what he was wearing, but my friend said if there was one person he'd recognise anywhere it would be Humphries. Taken along for moral support (!) we both arrived at the Mandarin ten minutes early and plonked ourselves in the lobby armchairs. By ten past, we had seen no-one who looked like Humphries. We then looked at each other. We realised that we knew him only as Dame Edna and had never seen him as just plain Barry Humphries. Desperate not to miss him, thereafter we went up to every quite tall expatriate man who entered asking is they might be him. By 5:30 we were panicking when a man in a suit, wearing a hat and clutching half a dozen large shopping bags entered. It had to be him. Thankfully it was. We went over to his hotel. He was anxious to return to Hong Kong where he had last appeared as a solo cabaret act in a high class restaurant at the top of the Mandarin in the 1970s. Like many of his first appearances everywhere, he had bombed. So he was nervous about how he'd be received. My friend did everything he could to work out a deal for a week of performances, but the terms proposed by Reid were impossibly high and no contract could be negotiated. I now feel I might try to buy a pair of his outrageous spectacles as a souvenir of that meeting!

Inevitably in discussions on this type there will be different results depending on the source material used. I had never heard of the Democracy Index before. It is in fact drawn up by just one small organisation, the University of Wurzburg in Germany. How extensive it might therefore be, how detailed and how costly the research may result in its being somewhat questionable compared to the more wide-ranging research undertaken by the Economist Intelligence Unit and major world organisations. For example, it describes itself on its home page thus - "The specific construction of the democracy matrix and its 15 fields gives rise to detailed quality types. On the one hand, these allow for the classification of political systems into hard autocracies, moderate autocracies, hybrid systems, and deficient and functioning democracies . On the other hand, they make apparent at a glance where democratic strengths and weaknesses are found in a country. Thus, for instance, free and fair elections can be held regularly in a country, but the standards of the rule of law are not assured. Further information on the individual regime classifications is to be found here." Quite what all that really means rather beats me! On another page it lists 5 keys to democracy. 1, Quality of Elections. 2. Quality of Parties, Interest Groups and Civil Society. 3. Quality of Media. 4. Quality of the Rule of Law. 5. Quality of Effective Power of Government and Horizontal Accountability. Given the above, though, it is obvious it can only be read when one also reads the description of the type of democracy within a country. In terms of rankings in SE Asia, I'm sorry that @Marc in Calif is not accurate. Taiwan is in fact ranked first at # #26. Few who know the island will question that. Indonesia is second at #77. Next comes Singapore at #86, followed by Myanmar at #91 (the rankings were published in 2020 and presumably reflect the situation in 2019 at the latest), Malaysia at #95, Hong Kong at #107 (similar siituation to Myanmar) with The Philippines a very long way back from Taiwan at #112. So it is hardly fair to suggest that The Philippines is No. 2. As for the type of democracy, the list identifies different types - Working Democracy, Deficient Democracy, Hybrid Regime, Moderate Autocracy and Hard Autocracy. The only Working Democracy is identified as Taiwan. It claims Indonesia is a Deficient Democracy. Singapore, Malaysia and The Philippines are defined as Hybrid Democracies. Thailand which comes in at #135 is a Moderate Democracy. I cannot find out exact definitions of the classifications! So I have no idea precisely what a Hybrid Democracy might be and comments I make are therefore somewhat in the dark! But to those who know the region, it is perfectly clear that despite its democratic institutions, Singapore is more akin to a right-wing dictatorship. And Malaysia with its constitutional in-built preference to be given to Malays at the expense of indigenous Chinese is more a Delficient Democracy. And I maintain that by comparison to all others (excluding Myanmar and Hong Kong) both Indonesia and The Philippines are Deficient Democracies. Last word. According to this listing, the USA comes in at #36 after countries like South Korea (huh?), disfunctional democracies like Italy and Israel, and Japan (another country where democracy is little more than surface deep).

Well, possums, it had to happen one day. The curtain has finally come down and will not rise again. The good people of Moonie Ponds outside Melbourne are left to mourn their most famous daughter. Dame Edna has died. Barry Humphries, the much loved Australian creator of Dame Edna Everage and a host of other characters including the perpetually inebriated cultural attache Sir Les Paterson, has died at the age of 89. He suffered from complications as a result of hip surgery in Sydney last month following a fall in February. It is unlikely the world of comedy will ever see his like again. Many compared him to the great film comedian Charlie Chaplin. There are endless youtube videos illustrating his talent. This visual quality on this one made in 2004 with Michael Parkinson, Dame Judi Dench and Sharon Osbourne is not great but Humphries is at his best, especially when talking about her son's homeo . . . well, I'll leave it there. RIP the one and only, the unique Barry Humphries.

So true. My guide's parents lived in Shiraz and his father made a very passable red wine. He gave me some in a bottle of what had been vegetable juice. He just asked me to rinse the bottle thoroughly before I disposed of it! My assessment from visiting various cities in 2018 is that the people almost to a man utterly despised their rulers. But they could not then and can not now do anything about them. Corruption in all political and military circles is rife. I was told the Supreme Leader pocketed US$13 million per day in bribes - although how anyone could know such an exact figure beats me. Regarding Iran. I do think a knowledge of the past is vital in realising how it has reached this point in its long and often distinguished history. It's fact that the country had downgraded the corrupt Shah and elected as Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in the early 1950s. But his party nationalised the country's oil industry because Iran was receiving only a fraction of its worth purely because the USA and the UK which ran the industry were desperate to protect their own financial interests. So the CIA abetted by the British organised the coup which got rid of Mosaddegh and the Shah was returned to power. With the Cold War in progress, the USA propped up the Shah who became a total megalomaniacal dictator as time went on. His notorious Savak Secret Police were hated, as was the ostentatious spending on luxuries by him and his wife. He then turned around and bit the hand feeding him when he led the OPEC oil embargoes which resulted in massive inflation and economic misery in the west during the 1970s. Within the country, he became even less popular. When criticism from the clergy grew intense, the Shah banished Ayatollah Khomeini who thus became a figure around whom the growing number of critics of the Shah could coalesce. We all know what then happened. The opposition finally got the Shah kicked out and Khomeini was welcomed back by all in the country. For a time he was lauded, especially after Iraq invaded in 1981 and started the ghastly war that lasted for 8 years. But Khomeini's firebrand form of Islam soon grew thin as the regime became more and more pervasive and more and more corrupt. But the Ayatollahs by then had a stranglehold on the country and, apart from one short period, were not prepared to give up any of their power. It is all so desperately sad for the people of that country.

I rarely drink beer. If I do then it is usually at the Ratsstube restaurant in the Goethe Institut off Sathorn Soi 1 where they serve a range of very fine German beers. If @vinapu ever travels in Iran - an amazing country with amazing people and stunning cities and scenery - I doubt if he will have more than one of the local alcohol-free beers. I found it quite undrinkable!

If Thailand really is "far behind" then it is largely because corruption is so rife in this country. Yet the comment by @Marc in Calif fails to note that Transparency International's 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index has all three countries virtually tied well into the lower half of the list. Democracy in The Philippines is largely a joke. True, registered voters have a vote. But the country has for far too long been effectively ruled by a clutch of mega-rich families who ensure that the vast majority of Filipinos are kept poor - many desperately so. When it comes to Presidential elections, The Philippines has a near dire record. After the murdering, thieving dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, propped up for decades by the USA as a pawn in the Cold War, and his luxury-loving wife Imelda - who has still not been jailed for her many crimes, one President was a popular actor who found himself ousted and jailed on massive corruption charges. Impeachment claims were made against his successor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in four consecutive years. Athough the economy improved under her rule, corruption remained rampant. With a rise in vigilante murders, Human Rights organisations condemned her government. A government enquiry found that most of the extra-judicial killings had been carried out by tmembers of the armed forces. But no one was charged. Duterte who was voted President in 2016 was also guity of approving thousands of extra-judicial killings. He even announced publicly that he would issue "thousands of pardons" a day to members of the police and military accused of human rights abuses. Yet early in his Presidency, a Pulse Asia survey showed that he enjoyed a 91% rating, the highest of all six Presidents since Marcos. Now the Marcos name has been whitewashed by the electorate with the son of Ferdinand Marcos elected as President. This is another indication of the corruption rampant in the country and in particular in the Province which the Marcos family has ruled virtually with a rod of iron. Re Indonesia, as the Journal of Democracy stated in January 2023, "democracy is regressing and endangered in Indonesia". After B. J. Habibe became President in 1998, there was universal hope that democracy and a freer press would become more entrenched. He tried to clean up what had been called a pollitical swamp but in 2001 legislators pressed by the pollitical elite and military leadership voted to get rid of him. An article in The Diplomat illustrates that under the present President, Indonesia has slid down democracy indices. In 2017 it was the worst performer in the Economist Group's Democracy Index when it fell 20 places. Now freedom of speech and presenting facts have regressed further. The President has now also followed the example of many dictators by promoting family members into positions of power and inflluence. Behind the scenes there are moves to permit the country's President to serve 3 consecutive 5-year terms in place of the present 2. The much admired founding father of Singapore, Lee Kwan Yew, frequently stated that the west had to realise that Asia enjoyed democracy "with Asian characteristics". It was not the same as democracy in the west. How true! Yet it is important to accept that true democracy can never evolve in Asian countries until a range of democratic institutions, the rule of law and freedom of the press are introduced and allowed to take root. That is unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes, IMHO.

Sad both about the demise of Pantip Court and the verdict on the man who promoted craft beer. Thailand Beverage Company is a huge monopoly that controls up to 90% of the Thai whisky market as well as owning Chang beer. It owns a vast tract of land around the Queen Sirikit Convention Centre and no doubt in other parts of Bangkok and other cities. It does not want other alcoholic beverages sold in the country and uses its muscle accordingly. The Thai government therefore places major taxes and restrictions on imported alcoholic products. Kloster beer was regularly sold in the country till the early 2000s when it disappeared from the shelves. Chang had started sales in the mid-1990s and did not want competition. So Kloster and Carlsberg soon vanished. Carlsberg eventually returned after a decade in the wilderness.

The death has been reported of Moonbin, a member of the K-Pop Boy band Astro. He was just 25. Apparently his body was found unresponsive in his apartment yesterday evening in an upmarket part of Seoul. No cause of death has been announced but it foolows that of a number of other K-Pop stars in recent years. In 2018 Minwoo of the band 100% died at home with the cause given as cardiac arrest although suicide was suspected. Three months earlier, Jonghyun the leader of the band SHINee is also suspected of having committed suicide aged 27. Two stars in female groups are also suspected of committing suicide after online bullying. In 2019 Goo Hara had also been abused by her boyfriend. Her death occured just a month after her friend and fellow K-Pop star Sulli was found dead. Much as the world has fallen in love with K-Pop and each band has a huge host of followers, the pressure on these artists who are usually recruited in their early teens and then subjected to a gruelling routine of training and rehearsals while closed off from much of Korean society is wxtreme. The competition is more than intense. Few make it to the top with much knowledge outside their hermetic existence. The members of the worldwide sensation that is BTS are one of that few. Its members have now suspended their K-Pop work to do their mandatory military service. Moonbin: photo The Chosunilbo JNS/ImaZins/Getty Images https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/20/moonbin-dies-k-pop-star-death-member-of-boy-band-astro-dead-aged-25

I had friends from Vietnam here in Bangkok. It may well be different up country but the use of mega-water guns here was common as was throwing buckets of ice-cold water over strangers. Hardly 'touching'!

If you spend too much time worrying about principles, I'd forget about travel. Many countries have different prices for tourists one way or another. Just put it down to experience. If you take it to an extreme, in my own country the UK I pay more to visit Heritage sites because many locals are paid up annual members and can access as many as they want over a 12 month period. Why should I have to pay proportionately more than they do? Because I'm a one-time visitor. That's perfectly fine with me. I don't pay taxes in Thailand. If occasionally I have to pay more than a Thai to enter a national park or even a restaurant, that's also perfectly fine.

Thanks for the clarification. Plus they own See's Candies. When in Taipei I always buy far too many of them, despite the expense!

If that were the rule in the US, Clarence Thomas would have just two more months 🤣

Given that there is a minimum age at which an individual can become a US Senator, I wonder why there is no maximum age? WIth near gridlock in the US Senate, we have the spectacle of Senator Diane Feinstein at 89 seemingly desperate to hold on to her Senate seat while concerns about her physical and cognitative health are spreading like wildfire. If failing health means she cannot get from her California home to Washington, she puts her own party at major risk. She has already been absent since February and missed 60 of 82 votes. She, though, beats Chuck Grassley on the other side of the aisle by only a few months. Presumably there is no maximum age because the framers of the Constitution in 1788 did not consider that many Senators would live above the average age at death which was then under 40! But when you look at the Supreme Court there is not even a minimum age limit and few required qualifications. The youngest ever appointed as far as I can see was Joseph Storey in 1812 when he was 32. When nominated by George H W Bush, Clarence Thomas was 43 and had only been a judge for little more than a year. Yet Bush called him the "best person" to take the job, a recommendation massively derided. It was known Thomas was an extreme idealogue. Perhaps it was an 'up you' by Bush to those senators who had rejected and condemned Reagan's choice of another idealogue Robert Bork only 4 years earlier. The point surely is: if the average worker has to retire from their jobs at an age of between 60 and 70 depending on where you live, why is there no maximum age for those who rule over us in Congress, parliaments and High Courts? Judges in the UK have to retire at 70 (although there is a remote possibility of extending to 75). Although there seems to be no mandatory maximum age for UK MPs, at present the oldest member of the UK's House of Commons is 78. One of the oldest ever was Winston Churchill who retired at 89. Of course the USA is a different country, but how is it - and why is it - that the Joe Bidens, Donald Trumps and Rupert Murdochs of this world are able to have positions of such power and so greatly influence events at an age when most of the world has not only had no choice but retire, a very large number are dead?

Just a quick note to say that Yunnan Province of which Kunming is the capital city has many fascinating places to visit. I flew there about 5 years ago and visited Dali, Lijiang and Shangri-La in addition to a day in Kunming. Dali is part of the breadbasket of China. Lijiang has a legendary beautiful old town and Shangri-La boasts a Tibetan monastery said to be the most beautiful outside Lhasa in Tibet. The Province has many Tibetans as it abuts Tibet. Dali Lijiang Ganden Sumtseling Monastery at Shangri-La

As I think Barry Kenyon pointed out in one of his articles, getting a new UK passport if you apply in Thaiand can take up to 11 weeks. This was prior to the passport officers' strike. Goodness knows how long it will take now as April/May is a peak appllication period at the national passport office in Liverpool for Brits applying for first passports for summer holidays. As I mentioned in another thread, I was in the UK last month. With just three pages left in a 50 page passport and rarely having a 3-month period before having to travel, a friend in London told me about the one-week fast-track service in the London and Glasgow passport offices. Although this is technically available only if you live in the UK which I do not, I did apply for an interview in advance and prepared various reasons which i was sure the officer would ask about. As it turned out, all I had to do was show him two previous passports illustrating how quickly they got filled up. Instead of 30 minutes, the interview took just 8. My new 50-page passport arrived at my relative's home exactly 48 hours later (I did pay a little extra for local courier delivery)! In total I paid about £35 more than the £138.51 quoted in the article. It was definitely worth it and I would gladly have paid even more.

I have never thought much about 'woke' and have wondered why the word has gained such traction. Reading the above, my first reaction was ridiculous! How can you reset a quintissentially Japanese G&S parody to Renaissance Italy? How do you make Sullivan's pseudo-Japanese music work? Then I realised it was only the music I was really concerned about because it simply would not fit the concept. In theatre (and often, paradoxically perhaps, opera), though, resetting the period and even the country can work extremely effectively. I recall seeing two theatre companies present stunning productions of classics reset to Japan. The Ninagawa Company took its Macbeth set in samurai Japan to the Edinburgh Festival and later London in the mid-1980s. It was adored by audiences and critics alike. The same country's Suzuki Company took its versions of various Greek classics on tour to various countries. I saw its Elektra with strong Noh and Kabuki influences and was overwhelmed by its stunning physicality and overall effect. Would wokeness have resulted in such productions being banned?

Can't read as the NYT is under a paywall. But I assume the opera is based on the book A Man's World which is summarised in the following longish 2015 article from The Guardian. Great true story. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/sep/10/boxer-emile-griffith-gay-taunts-book-extract

In 1979 most decent Bangkok hotels had air-conditioning. Even the Rose Hotel in Suriwong and the Royal Hotel near Sanam Luang, both of which would have struggled to gain more than 2 stars, had a/c. Perhaps interesting, Government House in Hong Kong did not have a/c installed until the start of 1979! How the Goverors put up with the heat and especially the summer humidity before then I shudder to think.