PeterRS

Beautiful photo. I think any city is enhanced by the topography beyond it, even though it may not be sunny. Santiago with the Andes behind Hong Kong Island dominated by Victoria Peak Tokyo on a remarkably clear morning

I cannot compare with the UK as I have never had to attend any hospital there. I totally agree that at Chulalongkorn everyone is eager to help, and that makes for a very pleasant atmosphere. When I mentioned registration, I should have added when first registering as a patient. There are certainly lots of these machines at the main entrance which are also used for appointments, but each department also has usually three machines where I registered this afternoon. As foreigners usually do not have ID cards, the machines have a "foreigner" button. After pressing it, it's easy to manually insert your Hospital number, check the appointment details and get the long strip printed in English that way. It's only for the eye checks that I have to use a lift. Perhaps its because of the retina check procedure taking much longer, I've often had lifts that are empty!

I have been going to Chulalongkorn hospital for 5 years now. It certainly is huge and very easy to get lost. At ground level for registration and first appointment, there are few staff members who speak English - perhaps just a smattering. The doctors I have seen have been excellent - and excellent English speakers - but it is rather like a railway station with many patients around, all having to register on their first visit before they go to their relevant department. Then there is another waiting period until your number comes up (literally). Finally you are in the right section but be prepared for yet another wait. I happen to have an appointment there this afternoon. Registration at 1st floor level opens at 3:00pm but a queue will start forming a good 20 minutes beforehand. Technically my appointment is between 4:30pm and 6:00pm, but it is usually nearer the end than the beginning. So I'm taking my Kindle. Getting a hospital appointment is not a case of walking in, though. It needs to be made some weeks in advance! Unless of course it is an emergency requiring Emergency Treatment. Last time I went to the private hospital BNH, I called at 08:30 am and was seen by a doctor at 10:40 am! How much longer I will go to Chulalongkorn I have not decided. Another reason is due to the government deciding 2 years ago that foreigners should be charged more than Thais. My doctor's fees used to be Bt. 200 + Bt. 50 for hospital facilities fee. I actually felt it was unfair for me as a foreigner not to pay a little more. But the government then whacked up my doctors' fees by 400% so they are now Bt. 800. Since I pay very little more if I go to BNH, I feel Bt. 800 is too much and I may just go back to BNH. I wonder if their Red Cross Clinic now has a foreigners' pricing.

Well the Winter Olympics are over for another four years. With a lot of time on my hands, I have watched more events than I have done in the past - and I have enjoyed virtually all of them, even the long distance speed skating which used to leave me cold (sic). Malinin's temporary fall from grace has obviously been a highlilght. In interviews after that Final he talked a lot about the pressure heaped on him. I always found that a little self serving. But this morning I found a fascinating interview on youtube with the man I still consider the greatest skater in my time, Yuzuru Hanyu. Speed and complex jumps are clearly essential in such a sport, but equally artistry - and no one has yet come close to Hanyu's supreme performances as an artist. Surprisingly, at least for me, in the vdo he stresses that taking part in the Olympics was never fun for him, even twice winning the Golds. I had never seen any interview with him more than a couple of minutes long. So it was also surprising that in this one he talks for 14 minutes solo. He had a number of bad times in his life, no more so than in 2011 when the tsunami off north-eastern Japan destroyed both his home and the Sendai ice rink where he practiced. Similarly three months prior to his second Gold, he had suffered a bad ankle accident preparing for the NHK Trophy in Japan and it was not known till a week or two before the Olympics if he could actually skate. He comes across in the vdo as a bright, intelligent young man, much more fluent than many Japanese, no doubt due in part to his years training in Toronto. I enjoyed watching him opening up about his life and career, and especially the final part where he is asked about death. I found that fascinating.

I wonder if you found the location of Isherwood and Auden's favourite gay bar, The Cosy Corner. It was where working men - and boys - were prostitutes. As one website mentions, it was a "truly decadent place". Undoubtedly no blue plaque!

I visited the park on one of my first ever visits to Japan decades ago. It is perfectly lovely. Smaller than many other parks but so typically Japanese and beautiful. I was there in the summer. I am sure in the sakura and late autumn fall colour seasons it will be wonderful, but I expect you would be joining a hoard of other visitors.

Many are not aware that Booking.com is not just one search engine. It is the parent of quite a few. Booking.com, Agoda, Priceline, Kayak, Getaroom, Momondo and HotelsCombined (which I used to use a lot for vacation travel) and others are all subsidiaries of Booking.com which is listed on the Nasdaq 100. Phishing is not Booking.com's only problem. Six months ago a law suit was taken out by the Association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes in Europe (Hotrec) with more than 10,000 hotels in Europe joining the suit alleging that booking.com - used its muscle to distort the market to their detriment over a 20-year period . . . It alleges that the “best price” pledge on Booking.com was extracted from hotels under huge pressure not to offer rooms at lower prices on other platforms, including their own websites. The hotel industry says that the Netherlands-based platform also used the clauses to prevent customers making what it called “free-rider” bookings, which it defined as using its services to find a hotel but then booking directly with the management, cutting out Booking.com. A study by Hotrec and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland found that Booking Holding, the website’s parent company, controlled 71% of the European market in 2024, compared with 68.4% in 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/07/thousands-of-hotels-in-europe-to-sue-booking-com-over-abusive-practices In 2024 the European Court of Justice ruled that clauses that prevented hotels from offering lower prices on their own or other websites are anti-competitive. Booking.com charges hotels commissions of between 10% and 25% with the global average being around 15%. With so many sites under booking.com's control, it's little wonder the company makes mega-profits. Little wonder, too, that booking directly with a hotel will usually - but not always - provide a more competitive rate (but always depending on season and other variables).

I fully accept you are the expert here. However, if Britain and other colonial powers had not introduced anti-sodomy laws and not only had them on these countries' statute books for around a century but also rigorously enforced them, might today's anti-gay sentiments be less? Might not those African countries which had been colonised just continue what they had been practising before the colonial powers arrived (and I frankly do not know if homosexuality was encouraged/tolerated/banned in any of these countries before then)? Just curious as to your thoughts.

Not again! Such a typical @Keithambrose comment - merely a word or two instead of a reasoned discussion (and this from a lawyer!) and no substance.

So if a poster comments that what you and some others have posted is nonsense, you'd rather walk away than present the facts? I'm perfectly happy to stop when you tell the other poster @unicorn to stop - and he then stops. Have you done so? Good luck!

And as a place to change trains! I once did a lovely short week-end trip outside Tokyo to Matsumoto and the lovely old town of Takayama. I had got there by train and bus, but getting back I needed a faster route. So local train to Nagoya linking with shinkansen back to Tokyo. No need even to step outside the station.

And that is total and utter B/S. You seriously believe that Japanese land was dished out by the US administration? What a ridiculous joke! You are implying that Japanese agriculltural history started after WWII? As others wrote consistently to which you failed to pay any attention, most Japanese land had been farmed for many, many generations of the same family. You will no doubt claim that the land itself became subject to Japanese government control following increasing resentment against landlords who hiked rents to ridiculous levels, drove many farmers from their land, the establishment of the earlier Imperial Agricultural Association and then the Nihon Nomin Kumiai, the latter effectively the farmers' union formed for collective bargaining. During the wartime economy, the government realised that the landlord system was a serious impediment to increasing productivity. It set up the Central Agricultural Association to supervise farming under the economy in wartime and later. This is typical of many worldwide governments which have departments in charge of agriculture. But farmers still owned the land their families had owned for generations and generations. This fact you cannot grasp. So best not to comment on it.

Presumably you set your payment currency as CNY

LOL indeed!

Having been a regular traveller for decades, I totally agree. I have used agoda, expedia and perhaps a couple of others and found they were basically fine. But the older I have got the more fussy I am about my room and its location - not on the first few floors and definitely not near a lift lobby, for example. Now I am only a member of one hotel chain but it consistently lives up to its promises. On my recent visit to Taipei, though, I found the price for my usual chain hotel had risen quite considerably. Having once enjoyed a very pleasant stay at a Japanese chain hotel in Tokyo (the one overlooking Kabukicho with a huge godzilla character overlooking the street), I decided to try their one in Taipei a couple of weeks ago. Excellent room, superb breakfast and very welcoming staff, plus only 100 meters or so from a subway station. It is essentially part of a chain and so I suppose I now belong to two, although the Japanese one does not have many hotels yet outside Japan.

I have often wondered this when these annual charts are published. Having travelled over the course of my career to many ocuntries and enjoyed many sexual encounters, I believe they are basically rubbish. I recall maybe around 1990 a visit to the old Babylon, then located at the top of Soi Nanta. Waiting with a few Thais to get into a private room, I finally made it and was immediately joined by a tall, slim Thai. We both had on gowns and not just towels. Lying down on the bed, I let my hand slip down. I could not believe what a monster dick he was endowed with, larger by far than most I had previously experienced. Then again on a recent visit to Taipei, on one visit to Hans Mens Sauna, among a plethora of well endowed young men there were a couple which would have had @Olddaddy running away screaming and probably asking for his money back! They were the tiniest dicks I have ever seen. Whoever is making the 'calculations' for Asians should spend time at hot springs. In Taipei and various cities in Japan I have seen such a wide range of lengths and girths, it really is impossible to come up with an "average".

Absolutely no offence taken - indeed merely gratitude for all you contribute and not just to this thread. I totally agree that cities do change constantly and pre-printed maps/atlases can certainly be out of date quite quickly - depending on the cities. I suppose my ideal is using a handy bi-lingual atlas like the one I posted which makes finding Japanese addresses quite easy since the address format used in Japan is totally unlike that in most other countries, and a downloaded map showing in more detail exactly where my intended destination is. A little anecdote. In between jobs I once flew to Europe with a Eurail pass to visit lots of places. In Madrid I based myself in a small hotel near the main station, the aim being to visit several nearby towns in the mornings - places like Toledo and Segovia - and then 'do' Madrid in the afternoons and evenings. All worked well until Toledo when it started to rain quite heavily and I decided to return earlier. On the train I walked through several carriages hoping to find a cute young Asian I could chat with. Success. I sat opposite a late 20s Chinese. I noticed that we were both using the same Guide Book (these were early internet days). And that's what I told him when trying to start up a conversation. He responded with something like, "Yes, they're really good." I then added, "I can tell from your accent that you are from Singapore." Which did not faze him a bit, but his next comment certainly fazed me. "And I know that you live in Hong Kong!" It turned out that he had worked with one of the government's economic departments when I was negotiating some deal with colleagues from my company in Hong Kong. Then he had been a slightly younger, nearly head-shaven civil servant. Now he had long hair and much more of a hippie look, having left government service some months earlier. I started to get my hopes up that we could meet later that evening. Then he told me he would be joining his girlfriend once we got to Madrid. Bummer!

Before moving to Bangkok, I used to tell offs that I was not a tourist and lived in the city. This obviously meant checking on condo and soi names before coming up with one that was believable. With just a handful of words in Thai, that usually worked well and the approach about cash moved down a notch or two.

I am not quite sure what your post means! But homosexuality in much of Africa was as stated essentially banned by the British and a few other colonial powers. What the legal situation was before those times, I'm sorry I have no idea. @Alex_Berl is in a far better position that I to discuss that than I.

It is correct to say that the British adopted an anti-sodomy law for sex between men in 1861 calling it the "Offences Against The Persons Law." Not surprisingly it was then applied to virtually all Britain's then overseas Colonies. And it still remains in some. But other colonial countries - eg Portuguese colonies - had the same laws. The French colonies never had the law since it was abolished in 1791. I am not sure of the difference between homosexuality and sodomy for not all homosexuals practice sodomy. I recall a television interview with Stephen Fry interviewing a government Minister from an African country where the death penalty could be administered for homosexual behaviour. The Minister said he found sodomy abhorrent. Fry claimed he was homosexual and had never practiced sodomy. I believe the distinction came into practice when a general homosexual law was passed by the British parliament and sent to Queen Victoria for signature. She refulsed, on the basis that it was impossible for one woman to have sex with another! The Bill was returned to parliament for amendment with sodomy replacing homosexuality. As of last September there are still 65 countries where an anti-sodomy law is on the statute books. https://76crimes.com/76-countries-where-homosexuality-is-illegal/

Try a different restaurant!

That's a rather unusual and I reckon unnecessary comment coming from @macaroni21. First I did say a "bilingual guide like this one" adding there are many available on amazon. I did not recommend mine although I bought it 15 years ago. And surely he is perfectly well aware that publishers do not keep such map guidebooks for 15 years without regular updating. All such books are updated every few years. That said, I have used the small map book whose pic I printed and have never had trouble finding anywhere in Tokyo. He should also be aware as one who visits Tokyo that Tokyo's Bangkok's gay areas are far more permanent than Thailand's. Shinjuku ni-chome has been there for the more than four decades since my first visit. Ueno also fits that bill to a lesser extent, as do several other areas. I have nothing against online maps which provide precise details of gay establishments. But for general getting around, I will always also have a small book map with me even though generally they have no mention whatever of any type of bars.

This is your reaction to most things that you do not agree with. We had an entire thread about the Japanese farmer who would not sell his land for the expansion of Narita airport. To you, that also made "zero sense" - and of course you believe you are correct, but you are wrong. That man is an individual who had his own reasons and made his own decision. The fact that a majority of Japanese agreed with him meant nothing to you. In the Circumcision thread, you went on and on about how "the science definitely states that benefits far exceed the (very minimal) risks." And that is pure B/S. The science in the USA where circumcision is regarded almost like a God-given necessity has been proven by the medical experts in a large number of other countries to be wrong, which is why the majority of male children in the world are uncircumcised. You have zero idea of the actor's financial affairs nor of his reasons for not buying a smaller house with less land. He had his own reasons which were no doubt perfectly valid. You make up beliefs of your own and put them forward as facts.

It is in the form of a small book. Amazon has at least 24 different bilingual maps of Tokyo each of different size and providing more or less information. I have used the one I pictured for more than 15 years and like it because it is easy to use and is small enough to fit into a small bag.

Did you not write that? Of course you did. I wrote that in reponse to your coment about suspecting the wife may be a scamster. Taking the two comments together, you are definitely implying that Spielberg donated to a scamster!