PeterRS

Not at all. Your summations are correct. If you are into gay for pay, then sticking with boys from the boy bars and boy websites in Japan does mean you pay extra for extra time. And your vacation will be more expensive than in Bangkok. But I assume since you are not paying for drinks and off fees, you are focussing on money boys from the apps. This always surprises me. I cannot speak for Pattaya but in Bangkok there are lots of boys in the apps looking for hookups who do not expect cash - and will sometimes refuse even transport money. The last time I was in Tokyo there were certainly fewer boys interested in foreigners. On the other hand there were far fewer money boys. Hotel room pricing in Japan is to a large extent dependent on room size and partly location. But you do not have to pay a fortune and the rooms will be spotlessly clean. There are plenty of guest houses and small hotels offering rooms around $40 or thereabouts. Yes, many will be small. But not all. For example, here is the room with bathroom at The Red Planet close to the famous Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa. This will cost you all of 350 baht on agoda for a night in February. Sadly the summer heat really is worse than April in Bangkok - largely because the humidity is high. When I worked there I needed a dehumidifier in the summer and a humidifier in the winter!

Considering everything, the cost of sex and massages in Japan is not all that much higher than Thailand pre-covid. You can choose a guy from one of the several boy bars to come to your hotel room. Each website is likely to have at least 100 boys with photographs, statistics, details of what the boy will or will not do and how much an hour or more will cost you. These bars also have some of the aggressively cute boys who star in the plethora of gay porn movies. Best of all the photos will look exactly like the boys. For around US$113 inclusive of everything he will come to your hotel room (and be there exactly to the minute), spend a hour with you and 'perform' exactly as per the website and you have informed the mamasan in advance. I have yet to come across anyone who has been anything other than very satisfied. True, you can get away with a short time in Bangkok for around 1,500 baht although it has been creeping more towards 2,000. In Bangkok, though, you mostly have to get to and from the bar, pay for drinks for yourself and your chosen one, and then pay the off fee. In most cases you will get what you have asked for - but certainly not always. Tokyo also has several of the best saunas in the region where you can stay for many hours. And although most of the bars are for Japanese only, there are still plenty catering to a mixed crown. And it is here you are more likely to find Japanese wanted to meet foreigners. The apps, too, are becoming more foreigner friendly. No doubt the problem more guys do not consider Tokyo a gay destination is the 'fear/concern' of not knowing the language and the local customs. Then there is the climate. It is even more hot and excessively humid than Bangkok in the summer and cold, frequently with snow, in the winter. Against that the spring and autumn periods are stunning with glorious scenery just outside the city. For those not wishing to consider Tokyo as a vacation destination, as a stopover for 2 or 3 days it could be great. Just make sure you have a good bilingual map!

As things stand, he is banned from returning to Australia for 3 years - although I'm reasonably certain that will be relaxed. But unless he gets vaccinated, he's out of the French Open and the US Open plus he'll need to quarantine before Wimbledon. I wonder if he realises that a lot of people hope he never gets vaccinated!

What's a video game?

It's sometimes easy to forget that 50 years ago couples in Thailand were each bearing between 5 and 6 children. The governments of the day agreed this was unsustainable and so started a major nationwide campaign to promote birth control. Leading the effort was Mechai Viravaidya who decided much greater use of condoms was required. He then travelled the country promoting condom use - basically through taking the stigma out of them. He would organise condom balloon contests, filling them with water and dropping them from heights and seemingly silly things like that. But it worked so well that condoms are still today referred to as Mechais! His restaurants Cabbages and Condoms are still operating. And it worked even better than expected in reducing the birth rate. Being at best a second world country, 5 to 6 children were economically unsustainable for families. Hence many were mired in basic poverty. As birth rates fell, incomes rose and the incentives for having fewer children were significant. At the present rate, Thailand is going to become eventually more like Singapore and Japan where birth rates are so low an increasingly smaller labour force will have to look after an increasingly larger percentage of those in the older age group. At present the birth rate per couple in Japan is 1.36. The spectre of importing foreign workers, once considered anathema, is now openly discussed. In Singapore the birth rate has fallen to 1.21 despite many government efforts to boost it. The nation-state now is home to 1.2 million registered foreign workers. This all helps to explain why the very large numbers of Thai boys working in the bars in the 1980s and 90s began to drop off by the mid-2000s very significantly. With all respect to @LondonerI do think this is now far less of an alternative to find work in gay venues than it was 30 - 40 years ago. Then the alternative to gay activities was indeed the rice field. I believe that is much less so today. Of course there will always be young Thais who like being with a farang, especially if he has money to provide a better life for him and his family. Same with the girls. But as - and if - the country keeps developing economically, I also believe these numbers will continue to fall. Will gay venue owners be prepared to continue operating with boys from neighbouring poorer countries, virtually all here either illegally or on one month non-work visas? I guess only time will tell.

I believe the weighing of the contestants used to be when they were nude. Wonder if that has changed.

Hong Kong is part of China and therefore what happens in China happens in Hong Kong. China is desperate to prevent more possible outbreaks because it is hosting the Winter Olympics in a couple of weeks. Draconan measures will not cease for the time being.

As I see it, the problem is one not uncommon throughout much of Asia. There is an assumption that one man one vote is the solution for democratic rule. That presumably is what the American colonial power assumed when it drew up the Constitution before leaving the The Philippines. Prior to to the US taking over as the colonial power, the country's Constitution had been based on the French model. That Constitution was immediately changed and in 1935, aware that it would eventually have to give the country independence, a new Constitution was adopted based almost exclusively on that of the USA. It has been changed since, but the earlier Constitution established the democratic principles by which the country would initially govern itself. It did put in place the institutions essential to a functioning democracy. And it is true that for a while the judiciary was independent and the first Presidents were acclaimed for their trusteeship of the post, particularly Ramon Magsaysay and Diosdado Macapagal. Then came Marcos, martial law and the descent. It is tempting to call Filipinos politically naive. As @TMax points out, Filipinos are addicted far more to popularity than policies. I cannot believe that the actor Joseph Estrada would have been elected in any other country. Even Duterte at the time of his election would only have had an outside chance - although with right wing nationalism sweeping much of the world, that might not be the case today. If Bongbong Marcos wins, as seems likely, it will largely be because he comes from one of the wealthiest families in the country and the fake history that is proving so successful in sanitising his father and mother's crimes. But I forgot in my earlier post to mention the dark horse. Another popular figure is in the race - Manny Pacquiao. Although he happens to be a member of parliament, he is a boxer who became famous because of his pugilistic exploits around the world. He is virtually worshipped in the country. He is also a noted homophobe. He has continually called homosexuals "worse than animals". He is also a bible thumper. So it would seem to this outsider that the choice is between one of two evils. I suspect Pacquiao will tamper less with the country's government. Marcos is the real danger man because he knows exactly how the country is run and knows exactly where his family's ghosts are hidden. So much for democracy!

I used to love visiting Manila for long week-ends. Before Bangkok became the Asian centre for commercial gay activities, Manila beat it hands down. A long week-end at the Philippine Plaza Hotel by the bay was incredibly inexpensive given its high quality and there were always so many gay westerners from all around Asia with their Filipino boys du jour. It really was gay central. I have written before of the delights of the huge barn of a place 690 Retiro Strip in the Quezon City area with its catwalks and well over 100 naked guys. In those waning years of the Marcos dictatorship, we were blissfully unaware of the depths to which Marcos and his cronies had sunk. Clearly corruption on a massive scale enabled the plethora of bars and clubs for all types to exist. One of Marcos' main antagonists of the time was the Cardinal of the country, a seemingly lovely man named I often thought rather appropriately Cardinal Sin. Jaime Sin was much loved and respected in the almost exclusively Catholic country. While his ranting against the evils of the Marcos regime seemed to come to nought, his open support for Corazon Aquino must have helped ensure the success of People Power. It took the murder in broad daylight of her husband, the main opposition leader Benigno Aquino returning from medical treatment in the USA, to waken us up a little. By then I had become enchanted with the gay scene in Bangkok and my visits to Manila tapered off. On my rare visits to Manila in recent decades, I have been depressed at the gay scene. For those interested, though, I am told other parts of the country are very beautiful and there are plenty of young willing men around. Any member been recently?

There was a time when The Philippines, released from colonialism by its former master the United States, enjoyed one of the most dynamic economies in the world. It was also politically stable and seemingly a thriving democracy. By the mid-1960s, other countries in Asia were mired in their own problems. Japan was recovering from World War 2. South Korea was in a worse mess following the Korean War. Hong Kong was still a sweatshop about to be engulfed by the mainland's Cultural Revolution. Malaysia and Singapore were much too young to have developed their economies. So when the Asian Development Bank was deciding where to locate its headquarters, there was only one real option - Manila. What no one then knew was that within a few years The Philippines would start a long period of disastrous decline, headed by a murdering kleptocrat who had been voted into the Presidency in that same year - 1965. With America soon to become engulfed in its series of wars in IndoChina, Ferdinand Marcos knew his previous colonial masters needed him and the military bases he could provide - big time. They would in no way force him to accept the usual checks and balances. As power increasingly went to his head, he declared martial law in 1972. There then followed a period of plunder of the nation's wealth, extra judicial killings and a massive increase in dire poverty nationwide. Opponents were first silenced and then killed. His dreadful wife Imelda whom he created the Governor of Manila believed, or so she claimed, her job was to give the Filipino people the glamour that none could even think about when they could barely afford to feed their families. By February 1986, the Filipinos had had enough of the murdering thieving Marcoses. They booted them out in a People Power Revolution and installed in his place as President Corazon Aquino, the widow of a senator killed by Marcos. That should have been the end of the Marcoses who deserved to be consigned to oblivion. The family fled into exile in Hawaii where they plotted their return to take power again in their home country. Only Marcos himself was by now too ill and died in 1989. President Aquino allowed the rest of the family to return to The Philippines to face justice for the billions they had stolen and ensure it was returned to the state. This was a decision that many were to come to regret. Marcos' all-powerful wife was hale and hearty and his children had all been earlier installed in positions of power. All used their former cronies to build a wall of silence around their kleptomania. Alleged to have stolen up to US$10 billion, the state has so far only managed to recover little more than $3.5 billion. The body of Marcos was kept embalmed in his home province until a national burial in the Cemetery of Heros was approved by President Duterte in 2016. To escape from the law, Imelda ran for office - and won. Even today at age 83 she out of reach of the arms of the law as a Member of the House of Representatives. She remains cocooned in her fantasy world of beauty, fine art, haute couture dresses, goodness knows how many pairs of shoes - and the rock solid belief that her husband was betrayed and wronged. Why this should still be something many in the media are now talking about again is the fact that another Marcos, another crook, seems set to become the next President of the country in May. Bongbong is the couple's only son. 4 years ago he was pretty much out of favour. Thanks to Trump-like use of social media he has cultivated an almost totally different persona. He has been almost completely disassociated with his father's crimes. Now he is a clean-cut businessman promising Filipinos a great future. Sadly, memories are short and too many believe him. In a recent survey, close to half of all Filipino voters are ready to vote for the former dictator's son. Not surprisingly, the man is a liar. He studied at Oxford University where he claims he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts. In fact he failed in Economics and twice in Politics. He did not receive a degree. He enrolled in the Wharton School of Business and again failed to graduate. Back in The Philippines, his father made him Chairman of the Telecoms company Philcomsat in early1985. Despite rarely visiting the company's offices or doing any work at all, he drew a salary that was allegedly up to $97,000 per month. Since his return, he has played major part in ensuring the family's ill-gotten wealth remains hidden. He has consistently trashed those who accuse his father of his many human rights abuses. But thanks largely to social media, Bongbong the crook stands at the pinnacle of power in a country where the government is infested with corruption and where power remains vested in a small number of hugely wealthy and influential families. Marcos senior frequently claimed that he would make The Philippines the Singapore of East Asia. Lee Kwan Yew loathed Marcos and wrote of him in 2000, "a self-indulgent ageing ruler who allowed his wife and cronies to clean out the country through ingenious monopolies and put the government heavily in debt . . . Only in The Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial." Once Bongbong sits on the throne, let's be ready for all manner of pardons and the still undiscovered stolen wealth remaining hidden where it will never be discovered. It now seems clear that yet again the Filipinos will elect a ridiculous, yet highly dangerous, figure to lead it. Adapted from https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/14/what-is-behind-the-resurgence-of-the-marcos-dynasty

As I understand it, some airlines have brought back the A380 to cope with the post Delta variant surge in desire for travel. To retrain its flight crews, Singapore Airlines is even running the aircraft on some of its short haul Singapore/Kuala Lumpur services. I have flown both Qatar and Emirates A380s. I found the Emirates version better, especially if you pay for the upstairs biz class. The stand-up bar at the back is a great addition. Not sure if it will continue post-pandemic, but EK used to extend one of its daily Bangkok services to Hong Kong. At around 14,000 baht with lounge service at both ends, flat bed seating, huge video screens and premium liquors, it was an unbeatable price.

Too many airlines are changing the seating on their 777s from 9 across in economy to 10, as CX has done. CX has also reduced seat pitch to add in 2 more rows. All that was before the pandemic! Totally agree with z909. Economy seating on the A380s have always felt comfortable. Here's a series of photos taken about 4 years ago with A380s on 3 adjacent bays in Hong Kong. I wonder if we will ever see that again.

Cathay Pacific must be in a desperate financial state. The territory has some of the most draconian anti-covid and quarantine measures in the world and passenger numbers have crashed. At least 50% of its fleet is now parked in Australia and Spain. It has been closing down its overseas pilot bases - decades ago it transferred many of its long haul pilots from expensive Hong Kong to their home countries in the UK, New Zealand and Canada - and offering early retirement to many employees. Last year it received a US$5 billion bail out from the government but that will have long been spent. The one bright spot is that its cargo business is better than before the pandemic. Whenever traffic picks up for the airline, some form of major restructuring will be essential.

If I recall correctly, the small print T&C of all hotels states that visitors are not permitted after a certain time in the evening. The reason for this is that under Thai law hotels have to report in their daily communication with the cops the names and passport/ID numbers of all guests staying overnight. So there is a cut-off time for guests in rooms. I cannot believe this is included on most hotel booking sites as they will probably refer to the need to fulfil the hotel's own T&C or at least to refer to them. Of course, many of the cheaper hotels turn a blind eye to this. But not all. By charging for a joiner, effectively they can include the joiner as a paid guest.

I asked the same. The fact was that most of the hotel rooms were spacious and beautifully furnished. But there was a corner in the building and the hotel had decided to convert these tiny areas to rooms. Being a corner, the space was in a V shape. They decided to have to room in the bottom of the V and the bathroom with the windows in the larger part. Result was the bathroom was about 3 times the size of the room. The bed was wedged into a wall and about the size of one of the beds in a normal twin bedded room. So if two were trying to sleep, the one nearest the wall would have had to climb over the other party to get to the loo! I headed my review "Beware of Phantom Rooms" I had earlier found the same in one Tokyo hotel - then just the Hyatt and now the Hyatt Regency in Shinjuku. I had once before been accommodated in a room that was a fraction of the size of the normal minimum price rooms, even though it was stated that two people could sleep there! That room was nowhere on the hotel's website. Attending a Conference a couple of years later, I asked the organiser to make certain I was not in one of those tiny rooms. Well, he didn't do his job and I found myself stuck in this tiny room once again. So I went to the front desk and asked what was the price of their standard twin or double room. I was told around ¥27,000. And the price of the room I was in - ¥25,000. This was nuts. I asked who booked these rooms. I was not told. So I asked to speak to the Night Manager. He told me that they were only sold to Japanese tour groups and walk-in guests. I was not Japanese, I informed him, and demanded to be put into a normal room with a large bed. He could not do this, I was told. So the next morning I had a meeting with a Mr. Kobayashi, the GM. In typical Japanese fashion he trotted out excuse after excuse. Again I got nowhere. So on my return home, I emailed Hyatt head office in Chicago. I got a very nice reply asking for my phone number and a suitable time to call. The young lady actually thanked me for my mail, pointing out that no-one in head office was aware of these tiny rooms. They had an executive going to Tokyo the following week and he would make sure to see every room type. A couple of weeks later she again called. They had instructed the management to withdraw all of the 90 small rooms in the hotel. She offered me Hyatt points equivalent to the amount I had paid for my visit and asked me to contact her the next time I was at a Hyatt as she would ensure I was upgraded to a suite. Great service! As a postscript, I was able to use those hotel points twice over. I soon used tham for 3 nights at the Hyatt on Waikiki. But that hotel was also a disaster - for reasons I need not go into. After I left for japan, I wrote a long email to the GM. He said he was mortifed at my treatment and recredited the Hyatt points. Later I used them at the lovely Hyatt in Kyoto!!

Words fail me. How on earth does a 6 out of 10 stars review merit a lawsuit. There must be something more to this than we have been told. On Tripadvisor I have twice given hotels 1 out of five stars. One was the Holiday Inn at Helsinki's Vantaa airport. There was no way to heat up the room as the hotel had determined what was the ideal temperature. When I told them I came from Thailand where it is hot, they did not care. The shower flooded the bathroom and there was a mop for guests to clean up the mess. The other was at a 5-star hotel in Tallinn. I was so looking award to staying there but the room was tiny, the bed was tiny, there was no bedside table and since the restaurant was closed the evening I arrived, they suggested I eat there the following evening. I booked, but it was closed that evening as well. When I complained, I was offered free transport to the ferry terminal to Helsinki. The car never tuned up. I took and laud for a taxi. At least the manager of that hotel refunded my room charges. He still got a 1 star from me, though.

There is already a thread on mens figure skaters, but I thought some in Thailand might like to know that for the next three months True Channel 690 has the Japanese semi-professional volleyball league matches on Saturdays and Sundays. I only discovered this on Saturday and really enjoyed the matches - and not only because some of the boys are very attractive. I particularly liked this guy from the Oita team. On court he looks like he'd be around 1.68m or so. But his teammates are so tall he is actually 1.75m! Very cute 23 yo named Yamada Kota. This is a short video on him from the club's website.

Unfortunately Thailand did not show the US Skating. We have recently had some other skating competitive events but none has featured any of the top half dozen men's skaters. We still do not know if the double Olympic Champion and double World Champion Yuzuru Hanyu will have recovered from his ankle ligament injury in time to compete in Beijing. I hope he does. For me he is the complete men's skater. Like most skaters, I love his costumes with their tight-fitting pants - often quite revealing if you use your imagination as in this less elegant photo if his getting rid of some of the glitter on the ice. 😍

I have to add that I'm very good at asking questions and pointing out what I believe to be problems. I am much less good at coming up with answers. I have sometimes criticised Singapore which is hardly a democracy in the western sense. But I must admit I do not know if there are criteria for becoming a parliamentary candidate. If there are such criteria, I wonder what they are and who rules on them. I also suppose the moment you establish minimum criteria there will be a lot of people who cry foul as this could eliminate some potential candidates who might well go on to become good and conscientious MPs. I suppose, too, if there had been criteria in the US in 2016, Trump would either have met them or ensured his minions found a way of getting him to meet them. I am no fan of Boris Johnson in the UK - although I readily admit that his opposite number in the Labour Party at the last election was singularly ineffective and given the choice, I am sure many voted for Johnson as the lesser of two evils, as it were. I believed his former boss at the Daily Telegraph newspaper who wrote a scathing article before Johnson became leader warning readers that he was totally unqualified to lead his Party and to become Prime Minister. I believe much worse was written, but I cannot remember it now. In theory, SIngapore could be an example of the type of democracy that western countries might look more closely at. The problem is that, like Japan, it is democratic in name only. Both countries are basically benevolent dictatorships and I do not see electors in western democracies giving up the rights and freedoms that would be necessary to make them work. The two core issues which I feel have to be tackled in countries like the USA and to a large extent the UK are firstly the two party system. You just have to see the mess that the US now finds itself in to realise it no longer works. Add to that the enormous power given to the winning party to appoint judges right through the entire justice system which effectively gives that party the right to determine certain key policy issues for possibly decades after the party has lost power. Secondly, as mentioned in my earlier post, governments need more time. 4 years is no longer enough given that the world will soon have an undemocratic China as the supreme power..

There can be little doubt that Trump is responsible for a great deal of the damage. Yet, I think we should never forget why this con man, fraudster, litigious bigot and TV personality actually managed to get elected in the first place. At the outset his candidacy was regarded as a joke by most Republicans. He treated his fellow candidates worse than cheating schoolchildren. Yet the US electoral system enabled him to become President! And now more than a year after he was kicked out, the faults in the US electoral system - of which so many have now become so obvious - enable him to continue with his lying, cheating and undermining of the very democracy the US is supposed to be built on. Anyone who really examined Trump before the election would have known full well the extent of the damage he could do. His failed business dealings, his close relationship with the in-the-closet homophobic bigot sue-at-all-costs lawyer Roy Cohn and so much more - failure to provide tax returns, obviously manipulated medical "record", views on women and so forth - should have disqualified him as a candidate. But he was the teflon Don. Nothing stuck. Set aside for a moment the antiquated and now ridiculous electoral college system. Trump was elected because a great many Americans felt left behind. It was not just the disastrous failures resulting from the 2008 financial meltdown which saw so many suffer so very badly but the fact that the bankers and financiers who actually caused it with their personal and corporate greed get away, in all but I think one or two cases, scot-free in the years following the scandals. Even before then, though, I believe the average American had seen many of the rich getting mega-rich while that average man or woman had to work harder just to make ends meet. At the same time the poor got poorer and felt helpless. When such a small percentage of the population owns such a huge amount of its wealth, how does that square with 35-40 million Americans relying on what used to be called food stamps. It matters little that it has been Republican policies which have largely created this wealth disparity. Americans were just fed up of government in general. Trump, the "successful" "billionaire" TV star gave too many some hope that life might just get better for them. It didn't, other than for the mega-rich and members of the Trump clan. I trashed the US electoral system earlier. I could as easily trash those of other countries, especially my own, but the topic of this thread is America. Whenever I hear pundits talk about American history, the wisdom of the founding fathers and their Constitution is praised to the heavens. We know that that document caused a great deal of angst before it was adopted. Now much of it is very much outdated and should be radically altered in my view. Two reasons. That Constitution was ratified by only 9 out of 13 states. In 1788 there were no motor vehicles, no planes, no computers, no public transport. A long period of time was required to collate all votes within a state and then another long period for those votes to be safely delivered to the capitol. There is today absolutely no reason on earth why it should take more than two months for an election to be certified. There is no reason why for a national rather than a local election a Federal law regarding election procedures should not be adopted rather than a whole series of separate voting systems and procedures mandated by individual states. There is no reason why the resultant votes cannot be quickly verified within days if there is a dispute. The hanging chad business in Florida that stretched out the election process in 2000 was a total farce in the eyes of the democratic world. A new administration could - and in my view - should be able to take over the government within a week or so at most. In the UK it takes 24 hours. Secondly, that long totally unnecessary drawn-out period between polling day and certification plays right into the hands of crooks and naysayers like Trump. No doubt some will argue that it has never happened before; that Trump is a maverick and it won't happen again. Oh really? I can't talk about the past but I certainly would not bet on the future! There are actually three other related points stemming from the present electoral mess. One is the example shown to the rest of the world. And it's a dreadful example of democracy and how it should work. The Putins, Xis and other dictators must be salivating as they trumpet how much better their system of government is. And let's be frank. Right-wing nationalism is now on the rise in many parts of the world. Secondly, the four year term of office is surely totally out-dated if only because it encourages short-termism. Few of us might choose to live in Putin's Russia, but for the vast majority of his people it appears he is doing a good job of restoring Russia's reputation after the humiliation of the fall of Communism. He has had two decades to do that. Xi has few critics, not because they are likely to be thrown in jail or worse. The fact is - and few in the west ever really acknowledge this - that since the end of the disastrous Cultural Revolution and the collapse of virtually everything, the economy included, the one-party leadership of that country has pulled a basically peasant society into the world's second largest economy in little over 45 years. Forget for a moment how it has done that, the theft of intellectual property, a disastrous human rights record etc. (but when we talk about human rights for Tibetans and Uighurs, it always seems odd to me that Americans conveniently forget to talk about the mass slaughter of the Native American population or the historical treatment of African Americans!). Just stick to the facts. China will be the world's next great power and there is nothing any other country can do other than resort to nukes. The fact that China is not a democratic society is constantly trumpeted in the west, especially in the US. Yet the US was founded on democratic principles. The people of China have never known democracy throughout the entire period of their history. One man (only once, one woman) has ruled China for millennia. The dictators have time to carry out their plans. A system of government that changes every four years - with an ensuing government able to undo what the previous one has effected as with the Iranian nuclear deal, for example - is a far from ideal way of being the world's superpower. Lastly, the Trump years - and some prior to then - have shown that an entrenched two party system of government is basically undemocratic. Oh, I know. The more parties, the more difficult democracy becomes. Just look at Israel and its plethora of small, single issue parties and the mess it gets into in elections. But the whole point of what I am trying to say is to challenge Churchill's view that democracy is the worst form of government other than those which have already been tried. I challenge not the sentiment. I challenge the vital need for democracies constantly to review their procedures for electing governments. What worked in 1788 in the US does not work now. As long as it remains unchanged, the world becomes a more dangerous place. All merely my views and I know these will have upset some readers. Fair enough, but perhaps you can explain how you believe the system should be changed?

Great photos of Doi Suthep. Thanks @vinapu

Very sensible.

When is life fair for all? Never! If someone gets pissed off, there are usually alternatives of some sort. Maybe they will be just as expensive but probably better quality. As far as transport in Chiang Mai is concerned, 'twas ever thus! As far back as 1987 on my first visit it was a lot more expensive than by comparison with Bangkok. But what are you going to do about it? It is what it is. At least now with Grab you get a quotation and a car that will usually turn up in only a few minutes. Same as transport in Phuket which for decades was - and maybe still is - run by some kind of mafia. If you don't like it, hire a jeep or a car. I just can't be bothered with the moaners who believe they could run things better (no doubt true) and that everything should be a matter of supply and demand for everyone (why?). This is Thailand - not England, not the USA, not Australia or any other country. What about all those first world countries I mentioned in my earlier post which appear not to have double pricing but make sure the tourist pays by slapping a tourist tax on every visit? What's the difference? Do moaners quibble about paying a tax which might be the same as an extra euro or so on a Swiss tram?

I agree 100% with @vinapu. I alsolutely fail to understand where those who feel that there should be one price for all are coming from. That's perfectly fair if everyone has basically the same standard of living and average income. Of course there are mega-rich Thais and it could be argued that they should pay more than even visiting foreigners. But this is their country and however they have made their cash, legal or otherwise, they will be paying some taxes. Visitors spend a considerable amount of cash to get here and stay here. The vast majority will earn far more than the average Thai. Why anyone feels they should be entitled to the same low entry fees always beats me. I just do not understand it. Besides, this practice also happens in other countries. It may not be a fee to enter a specific monument but you will have paid it in the form of a tourist tax - as anyone who has visited Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, The Netherlands and dozens of other countries will be aware! To clarify, the Grand Palace entry fee is actually a fee to enter Wat Phra Kaew. This is perfectly fair as it is, as @vinapupoints out, the most impportant religious shrine in the country. You cannot enter the Grand Palace on its own.

Reader's post is very informative and for many of us probably quite timely. The fact is that a will written in Thai is essential. Without that the Court will decide who your nearest relative is and he/she will end up with your assets. I had a will made on line by a solicitor's office in Phuket about 15 years ago. I thought it was virtually foolproof. Not so. A few months ago I consulted a solicitor in Bangkok who had drawn up the wills for two friends. He pointed out one clause in my earlier will which had been superseded by legislation. So at considerable expense I had a totally new will drawn up that makes my wishes 100% clear and 100% in accordance with Thai law. One issue which I was asked to clarify and include in the will is what happens if the beneficiary/beneficiaries die prior to my death. So a second beneficiary had to be included just in the unlikely event that happens. Copies of that will are lodged not just with the solicitor but also with the beneficiaries who also have the contact details of the solicitor's office. I believe the cost has been more than worth it for the peace of mind it provides. I have a second will in the UK and have ensured that neither conflicts with the other.