PeterRS

Not sure if I am interpreting your comments correctly. Please forgive me if I am not. But it seems from this post that you are not planning to take out a general medical policy when you move to Thailand. Is that because you already have one? If not, I do suggest most strongly that one is necessary for anyone living in Thailand. I realise some expats have no policy and more or less self insure. That can work but only if they have a large enough pot of emergency cash. The fact is that medical costs in Thailand keep on increasing (as probably everywhere). Not even public hospitals are immune. About two years ago the government mandated that non-Thais visiting the much cheaper public hospitals would pay more. The fee for the excellent doctor I occasionally see at the King Chulalongkorn Pulblic Hospital has risen from around Bt. 200 to Bt. 800 per visit making it relatively close to the doctors' fees at the nearby private BNH. There are plenty of private hospitals that will do your tests on a one off basis. But no clue about cost for your specific lab tests. I would email several hospitals and find out their current charges. I suggest trying Bangkok Christian Hospital on SIlom and the St. Louis Hospital on Sathorn where costs are generally a lot cheaper than many other private hospitals.

So why do you comment on them - with personal views that are not accurate?

For most reading Gay Guides, Richard Burton must have featured more than a little in our lives. He was after all not only a star of the cinema screen, he was regularly featured in the gossip columns of newspapers for a whole variety of reasons. Perhaps ironically, as in the previous thread, he came from the same Welsh stock as Sir Anthony Hopkins, although raised following the very early death of his mother in a poor Welsh village by one of his devoted much older sisters, Cecilia. His inexplicable acting talent was discovered by the English teacher at his school, Philip Burton, whose name he assumed for his acting career. Like Hopkins, he was also known for his drinking, although in Burton's case he could never stop. And it was largely a result of this drinking that he died. One newspaper stated he died 100 years ago this month aged just 58. In fact the 100th anniversary of his death was in August last year. But the error is as good areason for remembering him. Remembered mostly for his massive affair with Elizabeth Taylor, herself a fellow drunk during their whole time together when they made the movie Cleopatra and their subsequent two marriages, he seemed to become almost a caricature of himself, his talent subsumed by a narcisism and his alcoholism. It was almost as though he wanted to be larger than life itself, larger even than the massive rock of a diamond he bought for Taylor paying US$1.1 million in 1969. But we also remember that voice - that extraordinary rich low baritone which boomed through the cinema loudspeakers when portraying all manner of characters. Like Hopkins, his career veered between theatre in the UK and roies in Hollywood. But then he added Broadway when he successfully played in Lerner and Loewe's successor to My Fair Lady as King Arthur alongside Julie Andrews in Camelot. But it was certainly Cleopatra and all its surrounding hoopla that brought him to world attention, even though it is not much more than a mediocre movie made at massive expense. On a budget of US$5 million, its total costs in 1963 came to over $50 million, an amount so hugh it was almost unbelievable in those days. Filming took two-and-a-half years! Arguably Burtin's best movies were the adaptation of John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Edward Albee's black comedy Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, made with Taylor. Others will no doubt add his portrayal as Thomas Becket in the historical film Becket, a role for which he was nominated for Best Actor Oscar, an award he never won. Perhaps surprisingly for this most aggressively straight actor, he told a good friend in 1975 that he had "tried homosexuality". He also suggested that all actors were "latent homosexuals". The 2000 biography of Elizabeth Taylor even suggests there had been an affair between Burton and Sir Laurence Olivier. In addition to booze which almost killed him in 1974, he was a heavy smoker all his life. By then he admitted to drinking three bottles of vodka each day. I often wonder what demons were held captive in his mind as there surely must have been many. Rather than end with a clip of his own films or interviews, I add this short tribute to one of his friends of more that 30 years, Frank Sinatra. Not only will it open your eyes to a part of Sinatra's life, it reminds us how magnificent that glorious speaking voice was. It would fall silent within a year.

He is unquestionably a great actor. Like other British actors who have reached stardom - Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Albert Finney etc. - he came from a very poor background with little prospect of more than menial jobs. It was at school they discovered acting, or others discovered that talent in them. In an age when the government subsidised admittance to acting schools like the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), they started to blossom. That is how the young Anthony Hopkins started his long career in the business of acting. Now at the age of nearly 88 and with a hugely successful film career behind him that includes two Best Actor Oscars (The Silence of the Lambs and The Father) Hopkins has published his memoir "We Did OK, Kid". I haven't yet read it, and frankly am not sure I shall based on reviews I have read. I know from other books that I have indeed read that there was within the young Hopkins a rebelious streak and for some reason a deep-rooted anger. Clearly hugely talented, Sir Laurence Olivier took him into the company of his National Theatre that was just opening up in London in the early 1960s. It was a company that boasted a superb collective of actors and directors. But somehow, no matter his excellence, Hopkins was never satisfied. His anger was never far from the surface, he argued extensively with directors and turned heavily to booze. He mistreated his first wife appallingly - as reviewers highlight from his book - and had a daughter from whom he has been estranged almost since birth. He does not even know if she is married and has grandchildren from her. While remaining a fixture on the British stage and television until the end of the 1980s, by the early 1970s he was starting to work in film. Even then, he could be 'difficult'. Famously he called Shirley Maclaine, "the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with." By then he was commuting between Britain and California. Then came his huge break playing Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs, a portrayal unlike any other serial killer in film. Hopkins knew exactly how he wanted to play the role. in a 2016 interview, he spoke of his ability to frighten people since he was a boy growing up in Port Talbot, Wales. "I don't know why but I've always known what scares people. When I was a kid I'd tell the girls around the street the story about Dracula and I'd go 'th-th-th' (the sucking noise which he reproduced in The Silence of the Lambs). As a result, they'd run away screaming." He finally moved to California in 1998 and there he met his third wife, finally achieving both the happiness and long-term success he had craved. He had quit booze much earlier and found much enjoyment in his other great passion, music. Few know he is a fine pianist and has many compositions to his name. But why will I not read his memoir? As a number of reviewers have noted, many are likely to buy the book for insights into why and how he played so many charcters in film. Yet, in the book he rarely discusses his film career. Lots of personal details, and some are certainly of interest. But the way he approached Hannibal Lecter, Nixon, Hitchcock, The Remains of the Day (for me his greatest movie role as the emotionally repressed butler), Howards End, Legends of the Fall, Pope Benedict. Meet Joe Black, The Dresser and so many other roles remains behnd the curtains. Most moving almost certainly is when he was with his father just moments before he died. His father asked him to recite something from Shakespeare's Hamlet. “I stopped, he lifted his head up and looked at me, still baffled by his son who was so dense in so many ways but so surprisingly bright in this one” https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/anthony-hopkins-memoir-review-king-lear-nixon-b2857977.html

I would not even put the Agency's address. I'd put a nearby inexpensive hotel - or virtually any inexpensive hotel, for that matter. You'll be well out of the country before anyone even starts to check.

In the heat of the moment, it is sometimes hard to think rationally. But I decided that if I punched him and the police became involved, he could argue that i had started the altercation/fight. There were after all dozens of people around with its being rush hour and if anyone stayed behind to tell the police what they saw, they might only have become aware of the situation after seeing my punch, thus thinking I had started it. He both pushed heavily and used closed fist. After the cops came to the hotel I went to the nearby police station to make a formal report. After signing it they took copies of my photos. I was informed it could not be acted on unless I could prove damage to my person - meaning a doctor's report proving bruising. But I had been wearing a rather thick leather bomber jacket and he did not hit hard enough for that. Besides finding a medical facility, being examined, getting a certificate and then returning to the police station would have taken more hours than I wanted to lose. However, I reported it in detail to the limo company before my departure. They took photos of my photos and the address of the pollice station. I doubt that jerk will ever drive for them again.

I have never put my hands around a motorcy driver - only on a shoulder occasionally when I am getting off. Turning the tables a bit, on my recent visit to Taipei, I was accosted by the limo driver from the airport to my hotel. In all my decades of travel this has never happened before. I flew to Taipei on Wednesday last week. As usual I got a car from the limo counter. Fortunately I was staying in the same hotel as before and knew that the driver had stopped on the wrong street instead of taking me to the hotel front door. In my basic Mandarin I asked him to take me to the hotel. He merely got out, took my bag out of the trunk, opened my door and told me it was around the corner. Fortunately it was not raining but I had no intention of letting him go without completing the job. So I got out and was in the act of trying to take a photo of the license plate when he tried to grab my phone. He then placed himself in front of me, weaving around trying to avoid a photo. Then he started to hit me - six times in the right shoulder and my chest. That did it. I refused to move. Never once did I touch him. Eventually I got the licence pic and a vdo of his antics after which he drove off at some speed. I reported the matter to the hotel security officer who called the police and it was duly reported. When I flew back on Monday, I went early also to report the matter to the limo company. I could not believe that anyone in a Taiwan service company would behave like that. But I suppose there are always rotten apples. Some will suggest I should just have accepted the situation as the matter could have got out of hand. But it was rush hour and we were close to a traffic light, so we were surrounded by cars and many motorcyclists. There were too many people around for him to have become violent.

It does seem to be much more of a hot spring/sauna mix type of venue unlike, say, the newer and classier of the two Yunomori hot springs in Sathorn Soi 10. This certainly has some eye candy but the younger Thais who attend all seem to want to cover their "assets" with their hands or small towels!

Shouldn't that be "always being gone down upon!!

Like @khaolakguy it seems your comments with respect are based largely on assumptions. Unlike @khaolakguy though, much of what you write could be technically true even with the errors. But then when did you last see a touring production in Asia? When Phantom of the Opera played in Asia for the first time all of 30 years ago, it required chartering 3 - yes 3 - 747 freighters to fly in the scenery, equipment (including specialist lighting and sound) and costumes. The physical production actually came out of Toronto. In each city it required 10 days technical time on stage before it could open. It then gave four months of performances. Do you seriously believe that two of the most powerful producers of the final quarter of last century, Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Lord Lloyd Webber, would permit third-rate productions of their shows in such a key part of the world? Both also opened offices in Asia in Hong Kong and Singapore. When CATS had earlier been performed, it was the production out of Sydney but again, with the show's much smaller scenery, required just one full 747 freighter. Your comments about casting are also wide of the mark. But then you are clearly not aware that those playing the major roles in Phantom had all earlier appeared in the London or Broadway productions in exactly the same roles (the musical had opened in 1986 and so there had been several cast changes since then - indeed, it is rare for any top cast member to remain in any musical for more than about two years; they are then replaced, and replaced again . . . and so on). So to suggest the touring production was "different to the original show" is hardly fact. For your information, I am responding at length mainly because in the 1990s I worked variously for the Hong Kong Tourist Association, the Singapore Tourism Board and even more crucially the Singapore Economic Development Board. "Events" were and remain a key strategy, especially in Singapore, in the overall plan to drive both attractiveness to foreign corporations to base themselves in the city - and driving tourism. @khaolakguy was clearly happy to take me on by stating an untruth on just one element of several I mentioned. I also added "and other entertainments." Two I failed to mention are, for example, sport and pop concerts. Why for close to two decades has Singapore spent tens of millions of $$s each year to run Formula 1's first night race? Apart from the fact that over three days it builds a Festival around the week-end and makes much of that cash back by drawing in crowds of over 200,000 made up of locals, local expats and tourists, for many days the promotions and then the 'live' television pictures are beamed to many (probably most now) countries around the world. These give Singapore massive international exposure as a major international city, exposure that otherwise would be financially virtually incalculable. The same is true of longer-established events like the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens - a mix of great rugby with global teams and a massive week-end Festival. Let's also not forget. On Taylor Swift's most recent Eras tour, where did she perform in S. E. Asia? Hong Kong? Taipei? Bangkok? Kuala Lumpur? Manila? None, even though she had indeed performed in some of those cities on earlier tours. An exclusive deal was done with the SIngapore government whereby large sums were paid to her management to present all six of her concerts exclusively in Singapore. This did not happen by accident. It was all part of the much larger national strategy. As its Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said in his 1999 National Day Rally speech - “It is talent that counts. We can be neither a first-world economy nor a world-class home without talent. We have to supplement our talent from abroad.” Talent in that sense naturally meant business talent which would base itself in Singapore rather than isolated one-off events. But couple the two together and it is this overall strategy that Thailand has largely avoided. I am certain the ousted leader Pita Limjaroenkul with his extensive international exposure will be perfectly well aware of this. If he can ever knock the old guard off its perch and gain power, I would be much more certain of Thailand's present half-hearted initiatives being revamped and upgraded for the benefit of all Thais.

But you miss the point. How many expats can get in to see a London or New York musical? Theatres in which they are performed have seating capacities of somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 with most at the lower end. Plus the chance of your getting tickets for the top grossing shows is exceedingly limited and usually have to be booked months in advance. If you work outside of these cities in the UK, the chance of your seeing musicals is extremely limited unless you make an expensive trip to London and stay overnight. In the USA, the major cities usually get touring versions. The fact is that quality touring musicals in Asia attract expats, locals and tourists and can generate a lot of revenue. Thailand has seen very few because the TAT, unlike its Singapore and Hong Kong counterparts, has not even considered their value. And you have still not answered my question. You stated clearly that touring versions are "inevitably sub-standard." That is totally untrue. I asked if you had been to CATS or The Lion King when they toured to the Rajadalai Theatre in Bangkok and were therefore giving an accurate personal assessment. Yes? No? If not, then on what basis did you make your claim?

50 years have just passed since the very gay Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film Salo, or as it is often referred to as The 100 Days of Sodom, was premiered. Based on the writing of the Marquis de Sade it is as usual with Pasolini highly erotic, yet also as described by The Guardian as a "terrifying masque about fascism and compliance, an accounting of both sides of the totalitarian coin. Like De Sade’s own writing, it’s about power, not pleasure: who possesses it and whom it destroys. It’s an apocalyptic masterpiece that remains unbearable to watch." It was so shocking it was banned in the UK for 25 years. The Marquis de Sade had written the book while imprisoned in the Bastille. But he was only there for 37 days before he was transferred to an asylum. As described in an article in the New Humanist magazine, the story line is gresome - The film’s plot is straightforward. Four “Fascist” libertines – the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate and the President – kidnap nine young men and nine young women, and take them to a villa near the town of Salò. (The choice of “Salò” was no accident – the real Salò was the de facto capital of Mussolini’s Nazi-backed Italian Social Republic, and it was near here that Pasolini’s brother Guido had been killed in 1945.) Accompanied by four male guards, four soldiers and four middle-aged prostitutes who tell lewd stories to inflame the men, they carry out a series of tortures and humiliations on their young victims, eventually torturing them to death. Pasolini was a brilliant intellectual, one of the most prolific creators of all time and yet an artist who always courted controversy. In effect, and despite the shocked reaction of audiences, the movie is essentially an amalgam of Pasolini's own very left-wing views. In it he attacks authoritarianism, globalism and consumerism, basically telling us how disgusting modern society had become in his eyes. To a certain extent he was a visionary for much of what he considered life had become has indeed come to pass in 2025. Even so, some of his work came to be much praised. Frequently criticised violently by the Vatican, in 2014 it partly changed its mind and called Pasolini's movie The Gospel According To St. Matthew "the best film ever made about Jesus Christ." A month before Salo's release, Pasolini was murdered in the most gruesome manner. Always gay, he had a predilection for teenage working class hustlers. On November 2 1975 he was found dead in the seaside town of Ostia outside Rome. The evening before he had picked up a 17-year old youth named Giuseppe Pelosi near Rome's main station. After eating dinner together, they drove to Ostia. After the body was discovered, Pelosi admitted that Pasolini had made a particularly painful homosexual advance on him. Pasolini tried to get him to change his mind, whereupon the boy battered his body very badly, especially around his testacles. He then ran over the body in Pasolini's silver Alfa Romeo before racing it back to Rome. Some, including members of Pasolini's own family, considered the boy was a patsy and that the murder had been committed by more influential figures in Italy, perhaps even the mafia. But that still remains conjecture since Pelosi had after some days confessed to the murder. In 1983 he was released on probation. Yet nearly 20 years after the murder, Pelosi retracted that confession. He died of lung cancer in 2017 aged 59. The real motive behind the murder and by whom it was comitted remains a mystery. Pasolini was just 53. There is a lot of full frontal nudity in Salo. There is one scene where the teenagers about to be married all enter naked. I can only find a copy of the complete movie on a Russian website. This one below is dubbed into English. And for anyone wanting to see that particular scene, look at this you tube version at 41'15" in from the start. Just click on the small screen at the top. There is more nudity elsewhere where the guys seem particularly better endowed. But I just do not have time to locate them! https://m.ok.ru/video/1644224711193 The young Giuseppe Pelosi in prison - photo The Italian Insider website https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/01/what-did-pasolini-know-fifty-years-after-his-brutal-the-directors-vision-of-fascism-is-more-urgent-than-ever https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/4908/salo-the-unseen-movie https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/who-really-killed-pier-paolo-pasolini-venice-film-festival-biennale-abel-ferrara

Seconded - and the host of other great British actors like Dame Judi Dench, Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi. They were all jobbing actors who made their reputations early in their careers by playing in weekly repertory plays that toured Britain. That is how I was able to see Dame Maggie as a youngster when the new National Theatre toured. She was in a Franco Zeffirelli production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing with her then husband the wonderful Robert Stephens and a cast including such luminaries as Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi and Frank Finlay. All for peanuts in those days.

Debatable - agreed. But the governments in both Singapore and Hong Kong have spent billions in attracting international business corporations to base themselves in their cities because that is where the big taxation profits will eventually accrue (although Singapore has reduced taxation in the first years of relocation to the city state). Equally their Tourism Associations have spent more billions in providing some of the things expatriate managers - middle level and above - will miss if they are relocated to their Asian offices. Often managers just do not want to move, to relocate families, find schooling for their kids, and live in a part of the world they know little about. To suggest that musicals which tour to those cities - and indeed now to cities like Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing and others - are sub-standard is simply untrue! The quality is extraordinarily high, even given the demands and the costs of touring compared to having a show sit in London or New York for years. Besides, they provide a major tourism draw. I was on a contract for the Hong Kong Tourist Authority when Phantom of the Opera first visited for a 16-week run exactly three decades ago. It was only also performing in Singapore and Seoul that year. Just one travel agent in Taipei sold 10,000 3-night Phantom packages offering three different levels of Hong Kong hotel including the 5-star Peninsula. Others in Taiwan and especially The Philippines sold many more. The producers of most touring musicals aim to give Asian audiences an experience virtually as similar to those originally produced. As far as squality is concerned, perhaps @khaolakguy will inform us if he saw CATS, The Lion King or the handful of other imported touring musicals which have visited Bangkok and played in the excellent 1,500 seat Rajadalai Theatre. Did he regard the quality as sub-standard or is that just an impression? Please tell us. I saw them, and the quality was not in the slightest sub-standard. Singapore has additionallly had hugely successful runs of Mamma Mia (I took friends three times to see it in Singapore on its first run of several months there), WIcked, Sweeny Todd, Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, Beauty and the Beast, The Sound of Music, Hamilton and a host of others. Indeed, as reported in the Straits Times, a Broadway aficionado, Mr Jian Yang, the managing partner at integrated communications company Distilleri, who used to travel to Broadway and London to watch his favourite musicals is among many Singaporeans who merely stay at home to see the plethora of internationally renowned musicals now performed there. https://www.straitstimes.com/life/entertainment/curtains-up-musicals-enjoying-post-pandemic-boom-in-singapore

I find a number of issues raised the the video somewhat concerning. I do suggest that the history of Thai tourism is definitely not linked to just one Prime Minister and his efforts at the start of the 1960s. Almost a decade earlier, as the vdo points out, much of the world had become transfixed by an interest in Thailand linked to the 1951 musical The King and I with its popular songs being regularly played in much of the world. That the Jim Thomson company had provided all the silks for the production and the Queen had been photgraphed with its star Yul Brynner certainly helped raise awareness. Perhaps all this was not in a tourism sense, but definitely it terms of curiosity value. This was then increased very considerably by the 1956 movie. Incidentally, though, Jim Thomson arrived in Thailand in 1946, not 1948. Vacation travel to Asia in the 1950s, as the vdo rightly points out, almost in general and Thailand in particular was on the minds of very few people. How many anywhere in what we term the west even considered intercontinental tourism to Asia in those days? Very few, as evidenced by the small number of flights linking Europe/America and Asia. One of my earliest memories of the early 60s is of passing the windows of travel companies with their large posters of the new Thai airline in its exotic purple colours, so much more attractive and enticing that those of most other airlines! The narrator's comments about the number of Americans based in Thailand during the wars in Indo China (not just Vietnam!) can give the impression of being more than a little off the mark. He states "from 1962 and 1976, 50,000 Amercan troops were stationed in Thailand." The implication is that 50,000 were here throughout every year of this period. In 1962 there were 6,500 US servicemen based in Thailand to fight the Pathet Lao in Laos. It is generally agreed that 50,000 troops were stationed only at the height of the Vietnam conflict in 1968. Initially some selected Bangkok for R&R, but Bangkok had very few hotels in the early 1960s. Increasingly, with the US Air Force using Utapao Air Base, thanks to Thai entrepreneurs Pattaya quickly developed into a much nearer and even cheaper place to find the girls and the booze for the R&R breaks - or as some preferred to call them I&I breaks, Intoxication and Intercourse. And as rightly noted, more and more military personnel on R&R gravitated to the sin cities like Pattaya in Thailand and around Clark Air Base in The Philippines. But I find it really hard to believe his comment that "Basically Thailand used the war to build a tourism machine that would outlast the war itself." This may have been the result, but then no one in Thailand - or just about anywhere else, for that matter - knew that such a massive war would be the result of the initial fighting against the Pathet Lao. So the infrastructure for R&R was definitely not a deliberate policy. It was a policy that gradually emerged over a period of years. Also, no one anywhere knew when that war would end and the GIs depart. So what was being built were temporary facilities that had to start finding other "residents" once the USA started drawing down its forces from 1969. The narrator also fails to mention that Thailand had become a key part of the hippy trail in the 1960s, when hip young guys and gels from western countries sought a different vacation experience, mostly cheap backpackers on much longer vacations in countries like Thailand and Nepal. Naturally they spent overall far less than the short-term GIs. But, as Australian travel began to develop with family reunions between Australia/New Zealand and Europe made possible as a result of long distance flights replacing multi-week sea voyages, Bangkok along with Singapore became major stopovers on the kangaroo route. Over time, a considerable number of passengers used the stopovers literally to "stop-over" for a few days. This, I bellieve, more than anything helped with the development of, shall I say, middle class hotels. The narrator then virtually jumps from the Vietnam War to the years just before the Asian Economic Crisis on July 2 1997. Yet Thailand had used the 1980s to develop its economy in a big way. But he is absolutely wrong in saying Thailand was the hub of South East Asia by the 1990s. Singapore and Hong Kong were vastly ahead of Thailand, as was Japan even though that decade witnessed the country's own massive recession as a result of the economic bubble of the 1980s. I am also concerned about the "investment tourism" comments. He again omits to mention that Thailand was a victim of its own crony capitalism as the 1990s progressed. Thai companies owned by Thai managements were increasingly encouraged by the government. But as so often happens in Thailand, one arms does not always know what the other is doing. With the government desperate to keep the Thai baht pegged at 25 to US$1, its economy was tanking. Property companies sprang up by the many hundreds and new banks opened. Expansion was the name of the game. A large asset bubble developed along with unthinkable and unsustainable amounts of debt. But members of the government were also major players in the private sector. Changing the status quo was unthinkable. Inevitably the baht was overvalued. To maintain its US$ peg, local interest rates had to rise - and then keep on rising. Companies found it was far cheaper to borrow large amounts of dollars or Swiss francs where the interest payments were far lower. In the first month of 1997, the international speculators saw their opportunity. Anticipating a collapse of the baht, they sold massive amounts of the currency. To defend the peg, the Thai government spent $24 billion - virtually 70% of its entire foreign currency reserve. The defence worked, but when the speculators returned at the start of July, the cupboard was bare. Thailand had no choice but to devalue and then suffer a major recession. Thai companies suffered massive losses and many collapsed. By the end of the year the baht had lost half its value. What he says about the sex industry readers of this forum have known for decades. In this respect the vdo could in fact have been made years ago. We all know that as a result of economic developments and the rapidly falling birth rate the number of young Thai men working in the sex industry has fallen rapidly. They have been replaced by young guys from neighbouring countries. Yet, while he goes on about Thailand's sex industry, he fails to mention that it is a small fry compared to the sex industry in a country like Japan, for example. The difference is that some other countries have far better regulation and official ways of generating sizeable income from it. Where the vdo is 100% accurate is its description of "the emotional narrative of Thailand as unsafe has stuck." His views on overcharging and the general higher cost of living are also true. And so Thailand is losing out quite considerably to other South East Asian countries. The question: can tourism ever increase through the present soft-power government initiatives aimed at much wealthier tourists is one which definitely requires an answer. The problem is that no one really has any clue if it can. In the corporate sector, my view is that it can only do so if it changes its laws and permits greater ownership for foreign companies. It also has to offer far more than just great food, nice apartments, fashion and film. Both Singapore and Hong Kong long ago accepted that foreign companies need more to make living here for even middle-level managers from overseas more similar to working in their home markets. So they have invested heavily in theatres with top class touring Broadway musicals, orchestras, dance companies and other entertainments that employees could see in London, Zurich, New York, Sydney etc. The main Japanese and South Korean cities are similar. But I am certain successive Thai governments have never even thought of this!