PeterRS

Oh dear! I loathed Fantasy Island when it was aired decades ago and gave up watching after a couple of episodes. I won't be watching the new series. Thankfully we all have different tastes.

How many times have we heard similar nonsense by those hoping to influence both the public and the powers-that-be that miracles will happen, only for them to lose face in having to climb down when reality hits them in the face?

One of the problems clearly concerns what its termed, for reasons i totally fail to understand, the Modern Pentathlon. This requires fencing (using only épées), freestyle swimming, pistol shooting, cross country running and ending with equestrian show jumping! This combination was thought up by Baron de Coubertin and seems both futile and crazy. The event has been part of the Games since 1912 and has remained despite several strong attempts to remove it. The problem with the show jumping part is that athletes rarely make the best riders. Show jumping horses usually develop a rapport with one rider for several years. But in the Modern Pentathlon athletes are not paired with horses they know or with which they will have had any prior experience. It is purely the luck of a draw made 20 minutes beforehand who rides on which horse. I happened to be watching when one horse was clearly unhappy during the round and then totally failed at one fence more or less running through it and throwing the rider. What followed was a disgrace with the horse trainer running on to violently hit the horse with his fists. He was quickly banned from the Games and sent home. If you think that was only a ridiculous one-off, do please watch this video. Many top athletes, including those in medal positions up to that time, scored zero in the jumping when their horses either were just not prepared to jump or threw off their riders. They therefore ended up close to last place. It was a total farce. Soon several allegations of animal cruelty were being alleged. Why should any event based exclusively on skills required by soldiers during World War 1 be part of today's Olympics? Madness! From Deutshe Welle "Bucking horses urged on with a riding crop although they clearly don't feel like jumping over obstacles or even entering the course. Howling riders who have completely lost their nerve. Numerous falls by riders that just about walk away without serious injuries. "Sweating animals with wide eyes who, even after several throw-offs, have to ride on until the finish line is finally reached and the agony is over. No one needs to see scenes like these. The show jumping portion of the modern pentathlon on Friday was anything but good advertising for equestrian. What occurred in Tokyo's Baji Koen Equestrian Park was far from normal show jumping and should instead be described as animal cruelty." https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-animal-cruelty-on-display-at-the-olympics/a-58790373

I believe it was only you! I have read this poster's contributions on two chat room sites. He means what he says - even though there may sometimes be a lack of forethought before writing.

The frenzy on social media is unsurprising since many Thais still remember the disasters of the 1997 Asian Economic crisis. During the boom years that preceded it, the government was determined to maintain the long-standing exchange rate of US$1 = 25 baht. To do so it had to keep increasing interest rates. But due to various economic pressures, it also decided to dismantle foreign exchange controls. This led to some banking institutions and several finance companies borrowing overseas at much lower interest rates and then relending in Thailand at much higher rates to make major profits. When the speculators arrived in force in 1997, they were successful at the third attempt after Thailand had spent almost its entire foreign exchange reserves attempting to defend the $/baht peg. Crony capitalism had taken a hard knock. The crisis led to several major financial institutions and at least one bank going bust, including the country's largest Finance One. They all held non performing loans on their books amounting to over $3 billion. But many of the borrowers could not repay. The property market collapsed leaving many upstart companies also bankrupt. By December 1997, 56 finance companies had collapsed permanently. Another 58 required emergency funding of 660 billion baht. Bangkok Metropolitan Bank had gone bust but was eventually taken over by Siam City Bank. So a reduction in the guarantee by such a large amount inevitably caused a great deal of concern. Does it mean the country is heading for another meltdown? Very unlikely, I believe. But some may not agree.

Your assumptions are partly downright wrong - and partly vastly too simplistic! Many restaurants have closed for good. One of my favourites off Saladaeng in Bangkok Le Table de Tee closed for good during the first lock down in April last year. It was a small niche restaurant that could take not more than 20 diners per evening. Many others will never open their doors again. Restaurants and bars are once again closed in Thailand. Some are able to offer meal delivery. Many of those that survive have fired huge numbers of staff in the hope they can keep losses to a minimum. I spent a few days in a good hotel in Hua Hin last November. Most floors were closed off and staff numbers had again been drastically cut. Many other hotels across the entire spectrum of prices have been closed for many months if not for a year. I have little sympathy for gogo bar owners who in the past did indeed raise drinks prices when the tourism economy was in a bad way. But I have no time for anyone who criticises hotels and restaurants for having overcharged guests prior to the pandemic. I think Thailand has always had a hospitality and restaurant industry with standards of service and cuisine that are as good as anywhere - and better than most.

With apologies to @captainmick and others, again on the equestrian events. For the Olympics and Paralympics a total of around 325 horses are flown in on 19 chartered aircraft. 247 flew through Liege in Belgium where there are special arrangements for equine transport. There they had to wait for 60 days of stringent health checks and then a 7 days quarantine for covid checks before being loaded on specially adapted Emirates Boeing 777 cargo flights via Dubai. Most are in 2 per stall - i.e. per pallet. On board they are accompanied by vets and trainers. Once in Japan, the horses have their own specially built Olympic Village. Leaving aside the substantial costs of that 67 day wait, the actual cost of flying one horse obviously depends on distance, weight and other factors. The website CBS8 estimates that cost can be up to $30,000 although the average is obviously considerably less. Even if it is $20,000 that still amounts to $6.5 million In theory, 19 Emirates 777s can carry more than 6,000 athletes. This will still represent a much cheaper cost because horses require much more expensive ground handling at departure and arrival airports. Since a total of 11,090 athletes took part in the recently concluded Olympics, all could have been accommodated in just double the number of aircraft required for the non-human horses! Given that athletes came from such a large number of countries, the above costs/estimates are bound to be mere ballpark figures. But with the Olympics getting more and more expensive to mount, I for one simply cannot see the value of paying huge amounts for a few events requiring horses. But I do realise it will be the panjandrums on the Olympic Committee and the viewing figures of NBC that will ultimately decide. https://www.insider.com/olympic-horses-travel-tokyo-plane-passports-in-flight-meals-grooming-2021-7

Great for those using the 800,000/400,000 baht retirement option which has to remain unspent!

As a postscript to the Olympics, there is an interesting little article on the BBC's website. We are used to seeing the big boys go home with the most medals - in this case the USA and China. But is that a fair way of looking at a country's achievements just because both are huge countries with huge populations and huge sporting programmes at almost all levels of society and massive sports facilities? Frankly it is not! What if the medals table is arranged on the basis of total population? Would that not be fairer? On the basis of total population, the USA would have been ranked 60th. The top 10 would have been San Marino, Bermuda, Bahamas, New Zealand, Jamaica, Slovenia, Fiji, Georgia, The Netherlands and Hungary. How about based on GDP per capita? On this basis, the top 10 would have been China, ROC (Russia), Kenya, Ukraine, Uganda, Ethiopia, India, Brazil, Iran and Uzbekistan. There are other anomalies. The UK, many Commonwealth countries and those from the former Soviet Union tend to have a better sports infrastructure than many others. India excels at cricket, but that is not an Olympic Sport. It also excels at hockey, but that yields only 2 gold medals, one for men and one for women, whereas a top male gymnast has the possibility of up to 8 gold medals and a table tennis champion 4 gold medals. An individual in my bete noire the equestrian events can win up to a staggering 6 gold medals. Yet a high jumper or a javelin thrower can win just one. To judge success merely on account of the number of medals won without taking into account several other key factors inevitably discriminates badly in favour of the big boys. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58143550

Another disgrace among the litany of so many by Prayut and some of his government, especially the dreadful Minister of Health!

The Washington Post has a paywall. Could you kindly copy and paste for those of us too mean to cough up the subscription! Many thanks. On the topic, the Winter Olympics seem to have little more success at minimising losses than the Summer Games. Perhaps that is because some of the host cities have been mere towns or even villages. The 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics was held in a village with just 3,000 tax residents. They were left with a $6 million debt, although the New York State government helped take over much of that. Albertville in the French Alps fared little better in 1992. The French government spent around $1.2 billion to upgrade the region's infrastructure. Neither during the Games nor thereafter did Albertville and its neighbouring towns see any increase in tourism. The government was left with a debt of $67 million. Nagano in Japan had around 350,000 residents when it hosted the Olympics in 1998. As the Games neared, a quarter of the hotel rooms reserved for visitors were cancelled. Ski villages nearby which normally ran at 80% occupancy saw that drop to 60%. During the bidding process, Nagano officials plied the Olympic Committee members and their entourages with first class air tickets, stays at luxury resorts and pricey entertainment. No one now knows how high the loss of those Games rose. A member of the local Olympic Committee ordered all financial records burned before auditors could get near them! South Korea's 2018 Games in Pyeongchang is believed to have cost $13 billion against the original estimate of $7 billion. Bigger cities did little better. Vancouver in 2010 was left with a hangover estimated at $1 billion. It is unlikely it will ever be repaid in full. Nothing beats Sochi in 2014, though. That cost overrun is estimated to have risen from a budget of round $11 billion up to a staggering $51 billion. https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/10-olympic-games-bankrupted-host-countries.htm https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/south-koreas-pyeongchang-winter-olympics-costs-benefits-of-hosting.html

I know nothing about the case beyond what i read in the media. But should I find it strange that a 27 year old Thai male out to collect wild orchids was aroused by any 57 year old woman? The blurry photo of the arrested man in the Phuket Daily News looks like he is around 164 cms in height and has a full head of fluffy hair. The photo of the man on the motorcycle in the Bangkok Post photo looks taller with hair having receded slightly at the temples. Not that this proves anything. Merely an observation. A South China Morning Post description of the incident states the woman was swimming below the waterfall. It adds she was "partially clothed". Her purse had been robbed of 300 baht which according to the police the suspect used to buy "drugs, drinks and phone repairs." If you have what is clearly quite a large motorbike, after paying for phone repairs, how much would be left over for booze and drugs? Again something seems a bit odd here. Yet one more oddity is that the Ton Ao Yon waterfall is not well known, it's hard to find and very difficult to access. Several websites also state the pathways are confusing and you need good shoes to avoid sharp rocks. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3144249/thai-police-arrest-suspect-killing-swiss-woman-island

So glad you did. Double gold medallist skater Yuzuru Hanyu is one of the greatest and cutest of all athletes and has become a huge superstar in his native Japan. Only another 6 months before the next Winter Olympics. Will he still be taking part? I sure hope so. At the risk of hijacking the thread, here are two lovely photos - especially the one where he is bending down (oops!) Although it should have no effect on his athleticism and artistry, there is a lot of discussion on Japanese and other social media about his sexuality. He often appears with slightly gay mannerisms. His coach in Canada is openly gay and a gay designer often makes the costumes he wears.

I should not have used the term 'amateur' as it does connote someone who is not paid. As @reader rightly points out, many sportsmen and women receive cash from sponsors and governments. The term 'professional athletes' who make their full-time careers from their sports might have be enmore appropriate. The Dvokovics, McIlroys, Morikawas, the US and some other countries' baseball and basketball players are multi-millionaires many times over. I do not believe the Olympic ideal was that they should be the ones competing for medals. Cassius Clay was an amateur when he won the boxing gold before turning professional and changing his name to Muhammad Ali and becoming arguably the greatest boxer of all time. How many other non-professional golf, tennis and other athletes could use the Olympics as a springboard to international success? After all, even the golf majors have some amateur athletes playing alonside all the professionals. That beef apart, though, @fedssocr brings up the very pertinent issue of graft. It has been the blight of the mega international sports events for many decades. The IOC and FIFA which controls the Soccer World Cup have been the worst. The top officials, like the dreadful Sepp Blatter who was fired from FIFA and is the subject of legal proceedings, usually seem to get away with lining their pockets and it is their Committee members and Country heads who end up kicked out or in jail. Surely if the rotation of cities was every 12 years, say, rather than every 4, this could reduce the possibilities of corruption? The ease and cost of travel to the locations would not be too high for most people who really want to watch future Olympics and World Cups. But it is the TV cash that will no doubt be the largest factor in the decision making as to location and the sports to be included. If NBC reckons it got value for money having paid out US$7.7 billion for the 2020 rights, we probably won't see much change. Only if viewing figures for the equestrian events were very low is there much chance of these events disappearing. On the other hand, I think the figures for the new sports introduced this year will probably be through the roof given their appeal to youngsters. Maybe that will spur the introduction of more youth appeal sports. I can't wait for sepak takraw to be included! It could lead to that sport spreading to many more countries outside Asia.

That trend was started by Montreal which I believe took more than 30 years to pay off its Olympics bill which had ballooned to 13 times its original estimate. As an article in The Guardian pointed out five years ago, "No other Olympics has so thoroughly broken a city." Yet Athens in 2004 came close and many of the stadia built for the Olympics were soon decaying. They were just not needed. As with every Games, the International Olympic Committee came out with a profit not far short of US$1 billion. Athens ended up with debts of $350 million in addition to its decaying stadia. Increasing the number of sports which require the construction of additional facilities has worked in the past. For Tokyo in 1964 they were a means of renewing Japan's image as a member of the world community following World War 2. Seoul in 1988 was to mark the end of martial law and the start of a democratic country (although that did not really start till 1992). Beijing in 2008 was to put a kinder, gentler face on to a dictatorship with funds no object. Now though, the cost of hosting the Games means that far fewer cities are prepared to bid. It's not only the number of different venues, the number of personnel and accommodating them is also a huge problem. The swimming venue accommodates all the swimming and diving events. They can then become of value to the community. If a city has no stadium, then the example started in Sydney is one possibility. A 60,000 seat stadium for the Games which is then reduced in size to 40,000 to become more suitable for soccer or other regular sports. Facilities for judo, karate, boxing and other smaller scale sports are probably easy to build if they do not already exist. But I stick to my original point that building new facilities including an arena and allied requirements for equestrian events should not in future be required for an Olympic Games. Like Topsy, the scope of the Games has steadily increased from 17 sports with 23 different disciplines in Rome in 1960 to 33 and 46 respectively for Tokyo 2020. 83 countries were represented in Rome; 205 in Tokyo (odd, since there are only 193 officially recognised countries in the world!) Rome had 150 medal events; Tokyo 339. Such continued expansion surely cannot continue. Either the IOC locates the Games in one city which becomes the Olympics venue at least for several Games, or we will find that only cities in authoritarian countries will end up being prepared to pay for them.

Naturally sailors, rowers, skateboarders, javelin throwers and their ilk require equipment. But with all respect they are individuals with a piece of equipment necessary for their sport. If you take your argument to its logical conclusion, soccer would be out as it requires a ball! I suppose it's all down to individual preference. You like dressage. I loathe it. I hate to think how much training a horse requires to go through that routine. And you cannot name me any other sport - sport(?) - that requires a non human to compete! It makes no sense. If you have horses, why not camel racing? Why not sled dog racing? Why not rodeo riding? Having horses involved happens only because their events were one of the first to be included in the early Olympics when the organisers were desperate to find any sports at all? I believe one criterion should definitely be popularity of a sport. My nieces are both horse crazy. Oddly they have no interest in the Olympic equestrian events! Incidentally equestrian events were not included in the Melbourne 1956 Olympics due to Australia's strict 6-month quarantine policy. So it is not as though they have always been part of the programme. So I am curious. Given that some sports are kicked out at every Olympics, which ones would you drop out for Paris and Los Angeles?

On my hobby horse (sic) again. In addition to all the events involving horses, there are others whose inclusion in future Games I would like to see ended. We live in an era when the whole idea of sport is changing quite rapidly with young people leading that change. A couple of decades or so ago, who would have thought that skateboarding, surfing, karate and the incredibly difficult (and gripping to watch) sport climbing would be included in the Olympics? What new sports will emerge in the next few years. Many of the traditional sports were introduced a century or so ago, I assume because they harked back to the olden days in Greece. Why do we still have a javelin throwing competition? Who throws javelins today? Same with shot putting. It seems to me near pointless. Then there are more modern sports introduced because someone or some group had too much influence. How many countries in the world play baseball. Dozens, but only six compete in the Olympics. Why not more? At least that will be one sport not featured in Paris. A lot of athletes now earn a lot of cash as a result of their excellence in their sport and from winning medals. I have no issue with that. But why are the top professional golfers and professional tennis players, many of whom make tens of millions in their normal careers, be permitted to play in the Olympics? Surely it would be far better to restrict the participants to genuine amateurs. i'm fed up with he likes of Novak Djokovic, a player estimated to be worth US$220 million, have hissy fits on the tennis court because he was not good enough to take home even a bronze medal. He and his like should be forced to stick to the professional tennis grounds of the world. Lastly, in Paris the surfing competition cannot be held in the city because it is not on the sea. So, Instead of locating it off Biarritz or Marseilles, or even seek to move it to Portugal where the waves at Nazare are some of the finest in the world, what will the organisers do? Locate it 16,000 kms away in Tahiti! So what happens to the concept of an Olympics village where all the athletes of the world congregate and socialise? Zero sense. Once they have got rid of some traditional events, the whole idea of host cities must surely be the next on the agenda. If a city cannot accommodate all the events, why should it be a host?

With China backing the military and the mandarins in Beijing nervous of any revolutionary movements anywhere on their border, the supply of arms will continue flowing to the military. If there is to be a revolution, some other country/counries will have to side with those with those fighting against the present junta. So far it seems those fighting the government are on their own.

I just saw perfection again. The 14 year old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan won the women's 10m high diving. She was peerless, even beating into second place her 15-year old compatriot who is the World Record holder. Rarely have I ever seen so many top marks of 10 from diving judges. Quan was unbelievable to watch! As the commentators said, she was "sensational". And this was her first ever international competition! How can she possibly improve for Paris in 3 years time, I wonder?

Judging by the fact that soldiers have been escaping to neighbouring Bangladesh, that is probably very true. I have a dear friend who is half Thai and half Burmese. His Burmese father lives in the Shan States. For decades the central government has been fighting the rebel states which mostly border Thailand. Now my friend tells me the Shan army is calling up a lot of young men to fight the junta. As in Thailand, lads can buy their way out of army duty with what for Burmese will be an impossible amount of cash. Thankfully my friend has a job here in Thailand and has been able to send enough money to his father to buy out his younger brother and himself.

I watched him on the horizontal bar yesterday. He was the last to do his routine and half those before him had fallen at some point. He looked so secure throughout and seemed a sure thing for the gold. I don't think that photo does him justice. He is much cuter!! 😃

I find all the business of "I have a right not to wear a mask and not to get vaccinated - I have my rights under the American constitution blah blah" not just childish but anti-Constitution. Didn't the one good phrase Trump say to Bob Woodward in their various discussions about Woodward's book, "It's a war." Well, in a war, does the Constitution take precedence over fighting that war? is free speech still allowed? I very much doubt it. I used to get really worked up about the non-mask wearers and the antivaxers. Now I'd rather laugh about them. If they die, I'll not mourn.

Spurred by the hotel promo vdo under Gay Asia, this is an ad prepared by students from one of Bangkok's Universities. The gay overtones are very clear! Not sure who developed this also very gay ad.

The hotel looks nice - the Taiwan boys much nicer. I'm with Lonnie. If even one of those boys comes with the room, I'll stay there on my next trip. I see that rates around the annual Gay Pride Parade at the end of October (not that we'll be able to travel then, alas!) come in at around NT$4,200 or so. Quite pricey compared to many unless it comes with the benefits.

Optimistic PM? Huh!