thaiophilus

The usual confusion is between 100 and 500 notes, which can be a genuine accident as they look very similar under dim or red lighting. As others suggest, say the amount out loud.

There's that American exceptionalism again... What makes you think it's always about you? 😈

I once had the privilege of attending a private birthday-party performance by Mark Bunyan, who was canonised by the SPI as St Mark of the Musical Tendency.

You haven't met the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence?

Many years ago there was a fashion for huge grand pianos. The BBC was going to order one when someone said "hang on - will it fit through the doors of the hall?". The answer: "we'll make a wooden mockup and try it out". They duly made a lifesize replica piano - only to find that they coudn't get it out of the workshop.

A cynic would say the important detail is that everyone and their baggage goes through US customs & immigration and actually sets foot on US soil. That gives the government more powers to do things to anybody they consider undesirable.

I go by Katherine Whitehorn's (author of Cooking in a Bedsitter) rule: Red wine doesn't go with carpets.

True, but hardly unusual. Sterile transit within an international airport is common (outside the USA) but not between airports. How would you stop people just hoppping off the shuttle bus/taxi/train and illegally entering the country? G4S? Note that there's a considerable distance between the various "London" airports (LHR, LGW, LCY, STN, LTN, SEN). For example scheduled buses cover the 40 miles between LGW and LHR in 70-75 minutes but on a bad day on the M25 that time might be doubled.

The usual advice here (I have not tested it 😀) for prospective threesomes is that you should pick one, ask if he's willing, and if so let him choose someone he's comfortable with as the third party.

In a Baudrillardian sense?

Construction work? would that be "erection"? 😈

And a doctorate in Chapter IX - Of the Auparishtaka .

I suspect maybe @Louis has a mental picture of someone with a framed diploma on the wall, trained in all the exotic mysteries of the Orient?

Be careful what you wish for...

If @olddaddy was more attentive he'd have noticed a thread not long ago discussing the fact that Soi 4 is alread up for sale:

The extra hour is for the deportation formalities.

and the joke was that despite being better than Streep she starred in none of them.

Have you read the reviews of any of those programs mentioned? For example: "The problem with this documentary is it clearly started with the premise of Thailand is a country with so much danger, then set out to prove its own hypothesis, rather than investigate neutrally and let the evidence guide them to the answer. This makes it wholly biased and unreliable. Dreadfully amateurish documentary-making." ... and that's from the highest scoring 5/10 review. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt38286252/reviews/

Correct.

Way back in 2010 Andrew Drummond (journalist who used to cover the sleazy side of LoS, for those who don't know) had a story about a different establishment where one of the partners died in mysterious circumstances shortly after investing a lot of capital. I wonder if that's a mutation of the same story? I won't reference it here but it shouldn't be too hard to find.

Most browsers have a 'zoom' feature hidden somewhere in their menus.

According to The Men of Thailand circa 1997, it was in Silom soi 4, but "in late 1993 the owner of Rome Club began refusing entrance to patrons thought to be gay" and the action moved to soi 2.

The city that's so good they set it to music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqGJr2Bgo5w&list=RDnqGJr2Bgo5w&start_radio=1

The drawback with exotic airlines is that if there are technical problems they probably don't have a replacement aircraft where needed, so you're stuck. Larger airlines with more aircraft and frequent flights are more likely to be able to shuffle their schedule.

Not to dispute what you've said, but on a related note I've found that online review websites are useless for comparing airlines, because most of the reviews are of flights where something went horribly wrong. Pick almost any airline and there will be a worryingly long list of 1-star reviews from badly-treated customers. If they've had a satisfactory flight most people don't bother to leave a review. My only experience of problems with Gulf carriers was Emirates in 2020 when I had to cancel a flight because of COVID. They refunded my flight in full within a couple of days, and unlike many of the other airliness there was no pressure to rebook or accept vouchers instead of cash.