PeterRS

Having lived in Tokyo for a couple of years and visited at least 70 times before and after, i have never once had any problem bringing a guest to a room. Same with friends who have visited. And this covers almost all types of hotel from 5-star deluxe (paid by client) to 2-star tiny business hotel. This includes hainvg guys stay overnight.

Were all the attendant porn stars ladies? No gorgeous Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese male beauties?

FIFS'a incompetence has once again come to the fore. Having announced ticket prices massively higher than in their bid document, faced with a worldwide outcry it has - guess what - reduced prices, or at least some of them. Instead of US$4,185, some will get in to the Final for $60. And that $60 will also apply to all the matches. What a bunch of idiots to think the footballing world would accept their initial fiendishly high prices!

I'm not sure how you can call it "great brotherhood" when most of the rest of the world was doing precisely the same. The reason of course was realpolitik. Most of the world still basically hated the Vietnamese who had so badly beaten the Americans and it was the Vietnamese who had invaded Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge. Even China voted to keep the Khmer Rouge seat in the UN since it had beeen an ally of Cambodia and a foe of the Vietnamese for decades. How you can consider this as a particular "shame" on a developing country like Thailand rather beats me! Nothing is ever simple in global politics.

To brighten the festive mood and get our minds of all those Christmas balls and fairy lights, how about a few naughty limericks? This is an old one with many variations There once was a man from Madras Whose balls were made of brass In windy weather, the clashed together And sparks came out of his arse.

That was probably Erich Honecker! LOL

"Hey, Your Majesty!" is the correct form! But then I have never been in that situation. I did once meet his mother, the much loved Elizabeth II. I was in a small group of six headed by some member of the aristocracy - a mere Honorable I think, not even a Baron - and it was all rather like a Monty Python sketch. We had been briefed that we only spoke if spoken to by the great lady. The end result is there was silence for about the first minute! Even the Honorable seemed terrified. At least we had drinks in our hands. I spent my time looking at the diamonds around her neck and literally dripping from her ears, wondering how much they'd be worth!

With all respect, you outline a scenario which will not happen. Of course that is just an opinion, but when you look at Thai/Cambodian relations since this tiny border conflict started, relations between the two countries have actually been quite good. When Pol Pot's forces massacred a million (or was it much more?) of its own citizens, even with the border dispute Thailand set up camps near the border to house hundreds of thousands of Cambodian refugees. Had these not been in existence, who knows how many of those refugees would have been killed? Tempting as it is to make such a comparison, in reality they are worlds apart. First, the Soviet Union's hold on its satellite states was crumbling badly. In May 1989 Hungary had basically opened its borders, torn down its fence with Austria and allowed its people free movement. This enabled East Germans to travel to Hungary and then get to West Germany via Austria. Soon there were massive demontrations in East Germany starting in Leipzig. To suggest that these were "joyful" is, with respect, nonsense. The chanting began with "Gorby, help us! Gorby, save us!" They were demontrations solely to get rid of the East German regime and introduce democracy. East Germany then tried to close all its borders. Honeker paid no attention to Gorbachev's warnings. At a meeting of the East German Politburo on 17 October Honeker was forced out of office and Egon Krenz took his place. The Fall of the Berlin Wall was basically an accident on the part of the authorities. Almost certainly it would have eventualy fallen, but the impetus was a mistake. Krenz intended to permit East Germans to visit West Germans on a new travel visa which civil servants started preparing. The task of announcing this was given to the editor of the Neues Deutschland newspaper who was Party leader for Berlin, Günter Schabowski. Sweating and tired, Schabowski erred when answering a question from an American journalist. The speech which he had in his hand made it clear the travel visas would start to be issued on the 10th. Asked when it would start Schabowski replied "immediately, without delay." This news travelled fast around the world. By 8:00 pm the East German broadcaster ARD announced, "East Germany has opened its borders." By 11:30 pm the border guards who had still received no orders opened the bridges and the floodgates opened. Through that error the Politburo lost much needed time. Krenz resigned on 6 December. He was eventually sentenced to 6 and a half years in jail for his part in the killing of those who had earlier tried to escape via the Wall. The dictator Honeker died in Chile in 1993.

I totally agree with your comments about Trump. But not with your first sentence. Put yourself in my position as outlined in my post, when I would often be confronted by civil servants and political appointees who disagreed with my professional advice, even though that is largely what I had been hired to give. Sometimes I was ready to scream at them. But I realised it would have done absolutely no good other than perhaps getting me fired. And having moved 6,000 miles to get the job, I was not ready to fly another 6,000 miles home. I had no choice but to bottle up that anger. But then I would spend some time working out how to achieve my goal through other means. To begin with that was not easy and I did quite seriously consider giving up the job and returning to the UK. But guided by an elderly lady who had spent most of her life in Hong Kong, she taught me quite a few tricks that over time enabled me to get my way, almost every time. That was more than four decades ago ago and I'm still here in Asia!

The man who drove into the crowd in Liverpool in May was sentenced yesterday to 21 years and 6 months in prison. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/16/man-who-drove-into-liverpool-fc-parade-jailed-paul-doyle

On a day when the ghastly murder of movie director Rob Reiner and his wife appears to have been a result of extreme anger on the part of one of their sons, we are reminded that anger in whatever form can have consequences. In the Reiner’s case, it certainly appears to have been the result of their son's many years of substance abuse, perhaps – although this is only being hinted at and may not be fact - a misunderstanding on the part of the boy’s parents on how to deal with such very substantial on-going substance abuse, and a steady build-up of anger. We know that anger can be exhibited in many forms. Sometimes in an outright explosion of sorts. Sometimes it is bottled up only to show its ugly face in a seemingly inexplicable outburst at a later time. Frequently it is related in some way to mental health issues. Today in Britain another form of anger is being faced. It was meant to be a day of joy. Vast numbers had poured on to the streets of Liverpool on 26 May to celebrate their football team winning England’s Premier League. Streets were all but closed as the team atop their double-decker bus slowly made their way through the city centre. One car driver, Paul Doyle aged 54, became increasingly angry that the crowds meant he could not get to his destination. His anger mounted. As it did so, he took action. Shouting “Fucking hell. Move!” he continued on his way, driving right into the crowd. In his seven-minute rampage he injured 134 people, many severely, before the police could finally stop him and drag him away. Mercifully no one was killed. Having pleaded guilty, he is due to be sentenced today. The prosecutor, after outlining the suffering he had caused and referring to police dashcam footage, told the Court he was a man "whose anger had completely taken hold of him." I suspect that from time to time we all lose our tempers - with the honorable exception of our mild-mannered @vinapu - but never with such disastrous consequences. Some are more prone to anger than others. Some go to therapy to find some help. Some even enrol in classes to treat issues of anger, helping us accept those things which annoy us but will always be part of our lives and how best to deal with them. Like it or not we all have to deal with them. During my career I quite frequently wanted to scream at idiotic government personnel and civil servants who knew far less about a subject than I, the professional hired to advise them. I can recall two instances where I did let down my guard and let the madness take over. Perhaps surprisingly each had the desired effect. One delighted me; the other depressed me. The longer I lived in Asia, the more I came to realise that there can be other ways to achieve one’s objectives, more subtle ways that usually take longer but without the other party actually understanding I had won the day. I often think that annoyance, anger and other negative issues have increased very significantly as a result of social media. When we are in a pub along with other people there, few of us would scream at someone, “You’re just a fucking ignorant bastard!” As the result, at the least that would be likely to have a drink poured over us. On social media, there are no such consequences. A round of name-calling, perhaps with, depending on the circumstances, one banning the other. So, effectively what in a ‘live’ situation could have quite serious consequences, is dismissed with virtually none. What’s the point of being angry when you can make the other just disappear? Yet the anger seems to get worse. It’s basically why I call it unsocial media. On this Board we see some of this, but not nearly as much as in some other chat Boards. My discussions with @Moses no doubt fall into this category. There is much we dislike in each other’s commentaries, but if we were meeting in somewhere like the lovely circular bar atop the Swissotel in Moscow with its cute waiters and bar tenders, I suspect we would both be considerably more diplomatic, even though we would still never agree. So I suppose the point of this post is to pose the question: do little things annoy you and how do you cope with the resultant anger!

In theory you may be right. In practice, nothing ever works that way! You have to accept that this is the tiniest of a tiny fraction of the world's border disputes. And given how large many of the others are, not one nation is going to do anything to help Cambodia and Thailand sort out their little mess. Examples: 1. India/Pakistan: the state of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh is claimed by both countries. A UN-mandated ceasefire to demilitarise the region was technically put into effect in 1949. Neither party agrees to it and three further wars have broken out. There remains no solution. 2. India/China: two large and several smaller parts of the border are claimed by both countries. A border war took place in 1962. Since then there have been two more wars and regular skirmishes and deaths on both sides. There remains no solution. 3. Morocco/Algeria: folowing years of fighting, the long 1,427 kms border region was closed to all traffic and personnel in 1994. 4. The Spratley Islands: these islands are claimed by China, Vietnam, The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan. The primary reason is the reserves of oil and gas believed to be below the surface. The basis of claims is complicated, but China has musled in and started to build miltary bases. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea does not cover the sovereignty of disputed territories, and so this stand-off with occasional skirmishes will certainly continue for quite some time. I could cite dozens more. Many, as with Thailand/Cambodia, are the result of ineffective and disputed effects of colonialism.

I cannot believe the dissolution of parliament sets the stage for a military coup. The snake Anutin might then find himself very quickly out of a job and he has been angling after that top job for many years. I suspect it is more likely that Anutin wants a larger majority to consolidate his Premiership and hopes he will get one. How absolutely correct! @vinapu hits the nail on the head again.

It was me. I have no idea nor interest in what Lavrov and Milliband said.

Occasionally they also shared boys! I recall meetng one in Phuket who was taking time off from his usual Chiang Mai bar. I really enjoyed the one just off Rama IV. The boys really danced, really used the (dancing) poles and always seemed to be enjoying themselves.