PeterRS

Until today, Qatar has a special offer of 20% off all fares to Toronto. These are from Bangkok and not sure if they operate on the return. Economy is Bt. 35,509. But today is the last day.

An excellent restaurant in both locations. How very sad that the patron will no longer be there. Let us hope there is another staff member who can keep it operating at the same level even though it will never quite be the same.

I was there 3 weeks ago and met up with two guys I had met on a previous visit from an app - I think Grindr. Had I had time I would have visied my usual bar - Backstage Bar in Chinatown. The staff and crowd were always friendly. It's very close to Tantric Bar which I believe is the most popular. In my clubbing days I always used to go to Zouk which, although for a mixed crowd, always had a gay section. Haven't been for at least ten years but believe it is still one if the 'in' places. However, I hear it had been closed for a few months for major renovations and will not reopen till next month.

I only just came across this thread and did not realise the funds were for a funeral. The tradition in Thailand I have witnessed at three funerals is that money is passed to the senior relative at one of the funeral ceremonies (which is often not the funeral itself) but always in an unmarked envelope. This helps defray costs without the relative knowing who gave which amount. This may explain the young man's unwillingness to respond to an offer of cash.

The Sukhothai used to be cruise central for gays. Plonk yourself on a lounger by the pool and the eye candy was always great. Clearly no longer.

I watched Close last week and loved the movie. The two amateurs playing the boys were magnificent. How the director got them to appear so amazingly natural was superb. I think Eden Dambrine as Leo, the boy with the fair hair, performs that role better than Timothee Chalamet had played his role in Call Me By Your Name. Why he failed to win an Oscar nomination as Best Actor beats me. Three shots more or less just with Leo's face and his large eyes made one realise exactly what he was thinking. When his friend Remi is performing his oboe with the ensemble those eyes showed how much he loved his friend. On the bus coming back from the school trip and his mother tells him that Remi is no longer with us, that look of sharp disbelief tells us he knows what has happened. And then then scene at the very end. Whereas at the start we had seen Leo and Remi running and laughing through fields of flowers, a year later we see Leo in the same fields but he stops and turns around. He has started to mature in the intervening year but those eyes tell us he still misses Remi. Pre-pubesent male friendships is an unusual subject for a movie. At the Cannes Film Festival, after the ten-minute standing ovation from the audience, the director takes a microphone and explains why he made it. It is a very short moving speech. You can see it in this longer vdo. Start at 10:00 minutes in. It lasts only 1 minute 26 seconds.

Which makes me wonder: why is it that events limited to a tiny part of the planet have so influenced vast numbers today?

You are correct. The point of the thread is that the ¥ has been losing value again.

I rarely pick up a bible and don't recall the Noah story well. Did the Lord above warn him of a flood that would cover the whole earth? That is massively unlikely as in those days the earth was surely regarded by those living in it merely as a tiny area of our planet. A flood, if one happened, no doubt covered just that minute area and not the far larger regions about whom those living in the time of Genesis had not the slightest clue.

As well as a lot of politicians using their corruption gains to buy them.

That was a small subsidiary Lufthansa CityLine that was due to be closed down anyway in 2027.

There used to be a Louis Vuitton store in the lobby of one of Hong Kong's top hotels, The Peninsula. On many days of the week you simply could not get inside the store and there would be a queue of young Japanese office ladies waiting to get in. Some Japanese tour operators organised luxury shopping tours to Hong Kong where these types of luxury goods were a good deal cheaper than in Japan. Many of these Japanese shoppers reckoned they saved more than the cost of their air fares and hotel rooms because their purchases were so much cheaper in Hong Kong.

It may well be. I did include links which I think mentioned this fact and presumably some reasoning. It's just that I know little about the luxury market. I have foreign friends who bought an apartment in the tall Sukhothai Residences (across from the now dead Babylon) about a dozen years ago when real estate in that particular property was the most expensive in the city. Much more recently the far smaller building on the left at the top of Witthayu One 89 Wireless was regarded as the most expensive with prices for ultra luxury apartments selling at around Bt. 500,000 per sq.m. This now appears to have been equalled and in some units overtaken by Scope Langsuan. Look at any site dealing with Bangkok luxury apartments and you see that many have been and are still being contructed and sold with prices in the Bt. 250,000 - 300,000 per sq.m. range. I suspect many are snapped up by Chinese, Russian and other mega rich in countries where they might wish to hide their wealth. Some of these will no doubt be the people targetted by the ultra-expensive Thailand Privilege Visas. https://bangkokresidential.com/bangkoks-12-best-luxury-condo-developments-in-2025

Japan always had some crazy prices. I remember one time staying wth friends near Roppongi Crossing. Nearby was a booze shop. It was selling bottles of Dom Perignon champagne at prices cheaper than Duty Free at any airport! On a first visit in the early 1980s, I noticed in the window of an uparket retailer a bottle of Remy Martin XO brandy at ¥50,000. Expensive then at around US$200. By the time I ceased working there and returned to Hong Kong, that same bottle was in the same window at exactly the same price - yet in US$ terms it was over $410. I asked the manager why the price had not been brought down to around ¥25,000. He said that Japanese people perceived the value of a product and if he brought the price down it would be regarded as inferior! Odd!

Ownership of the Spratley Islands is disputed by several countries including China, Vietnam, The Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. The islands are really not islands as such - more like ocean reefs, although China has built bases and outposts on several. But they are important both as major fishing grounds and more because of the reserves of oil and gas assumed to be below the surface. China's interest also arises because it is part of the shipping lane in the South China Sea with Taiwan at its north end. @jason1975 is correct that the last really major skirmish between China and Vietnam was in 1988 when 64 Vietnamese soldiers were killed. But occasional skirmishes still break out. The irony is that all the other countries are closer to the Islands with China being the furthest away. China's claim to them dates back to maps purported to have been drawn up 500 years ago, and also the 1945 Treaty at the end of the War in the Pacific which seems to have had a clause giving them to the government in Beijing. But since the Americans basically wrote that Treaty, it seems like this might be yet another case of American interference where it has only resulted in major non-American regional disputes. https://amti.csis.org/island-tracker/china/