PeterRS

@Olddaddy seems to know a lot about the Philippines. You might consider sending him a PM.

This question is purely a request for more information - absolutely nothing more. The government of Iran (which I will always divorce from the people of that country) is a pariah state. Part of its actions in recent decades seem to be a hankering after some of its long lost glories. It was after all for a time the largest Empire the world had ever known. It was home to the world's first monotheastic religion, Zoroastrianism. It welcomed other religions a long time before they ventured westwards, in particular Judaism and Christianity. All three are protected state religions whose adherents have the right to practice their religions and which have dedicated seats in the Iranian parliament. Indeed there are references to Persia in no less than five books in the Old Testament. That aside, what consequences do you see or refer to if it "miscalculates the consequences of future actions"? Do you see the US taking action against it? Many might love to see that, but I consider it so unlikely it will not happen. The US is inextricably bound up with Israel/Palestine, with Ukraine and all but obligated to stand by to aid Taiwan if China were to invade. It is surely unlikely Congress and the US public will accept another war front. Israel with a thumbs up from the USA bombed a suspected nuclear facility in Iran in 2007 and kept the raid secret from the world for seven months. Iran is now a much more militant adversary and one with the ability to manufacture different and sophisticated weaponry as the Ukrainians have found out. With Russia and China in its corner, what does it stand to lose?

As I wrote you and I will agree to disagree. Nothing excuses not only the Holocaust but the ghastly inhumane treatment of Jewish people in Germany throughout most of the Nazi regime. I have never denied that and would never consider doing so. And I agree that in most people's minds had it not occurred the present Israeli/Palestinian conflicts would not be happening and Iran might - although I happen to doubt this - be sitting on the sidelines wondering where next to hit US interests. But the fact cannot be denied that many Jews pre-Holocaust had emigrated from Germany to other countries including Palestine. Folllowing WWII, quite a number of Jews not just from Germany but also other parts of devastated Europe made their way to Palestine because their own pre-war homes no longer existed. The number was at least 600,000. It was more than just a matter of shame that the post-WWII British administration in Palestine denied access to the country to most Holocaust survivors. And it was before most arrived that Ben Gurion made his pledge I referred to in my earlier post. The Arab-Jewish/Israeli conflict pre-dates the Holocaust. I merely say again that the main thrust of my OP were faults of the US (seen in hindsight) through not having Middle East specialists in its post war state department. It got it policies re Iran totally wrong - just as it did in Vietnam. The result is that a country which was once a staunch ally of the US is now arguably its most stanuch foe. And that is incontrovertible.

Can't please everyone. I did write a 5 part series last year. I was then asked why not write just one long one as it was easier to read! 😵

Seems a great way to travel the 750 kms betwen the two cities, the more so as the most expensive week-end ticket seems to be just US$43. The cuisine on board seems to be western given the table layouts in the photo, but I expect it should be very good. Individuals will clearly be sharing sleeping cabins with three others. Best to get three willing Vietnamese and have a nice little orgy before sleep and breakfast!

Not only are you correct in terms of the Americans. I think what you say is true of peoples in many parts of the world. Of that group, most do not want to know. But as I have tried to at least suggest, the history of that part of the world is complex and goes much further back than the Holocaust. That hideous atrocity only made the aim of the Zionists for a separate Jewish state in Israel far more urgent. Jews had been living in Palestine long before WWII. Life was not easy for them for first the Ottomans and then the British not only did not want them, the British actually turned back shiploads of refugees, including Holocaust refugees, from attempting to land. But by the time of the United Nations declaration in 1948, there were already 600,000 Jews living in what became Israel. On the day Israeli leader David Ben Gurion declared the inauguration of the state of Israel, he made a speech. He promised the State of israel would "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and will be faithful to the principles of the United Nations." So we should ask ourselves: has the state of Israel lived up to these specific promises? The detail of the conflicts in the following half century can be itemised elsewhere. The nearest peace came about was at Camp David in 2000 when President Clinton all but forced Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat to find a solution. Declassified documents and comments made by those present illustrate they never came close, despite the much more positive political spin later put on the negotiations. They agree that while Arafat was given many more concessions than at any other time, his aim had always been a one state solution. He killed the negotiations. And now the region is a tinder box again. Had the hugely admired soldier and politician Yitzhak Rabin not been assassinated by an ultra right wing Jew in 1995, many believe he could have brokered a workable peace. We will never know. What we do know is that with the election of the right wing governments of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, the idea of a peace settlement moved much further into the future. In the meantime, America's one time ally Iran lurks in the background revelling in using proxies to get back at what is now its implaccable foe.

There are lots of issues which have been raised but I will for the present reply to just two. It is fact that Prime Minister Mosaddegh was not communist, his government was not ommunist-leaning and he had no communist sympathies. There was no indication that his continuing in office would have resulted in Iran moving towards the USSR's camp. Mosaddegh had been duly elected as Prime Minster. Ironically the USA prides itself as a bastion of democracy - which of course is the subject for another long thread given the host of serious isues it now faces in Congress, with a lying and corrupt past president, and doubts over the worthiness of at least two Supreme Court Justices - but the rights of other countries to decide their own form of democracy is frequently questioned. That was certainly the view of Lee Kwan Yew who made Singapore into such an amazing economic success story. The US problem in the early 1950s was that its officials viewed Iran as backward, feudal and vulnerable to social revolution. American thinking at the time emphasised economic development driven by central state growth as a cure for what it perceived as these apparent ills - a view that prioritised security over democracy and therefore favoured authoritarian regimes over popular democratic coalitions. This view coloured US thinking in quite a few other parts of the world. But propping up the murdering thieving dictator Marcos did not turn the Filipinos against the USA in the long term. It did not turn the Vietnamese against the USA despite 3 milion deaths and its propping up deeply corrupt leaders of its proxy South Vietnam and in one case of murdering him. Similarly with most countries ruled by dictators propped up by the USA during the Cold War. I can think of no major US ally that is now such an implaccable and active foe as Iran. There we have to agree to disagree. That said, I do agree my comment was perhaps not well thought through. But the persecution of Jews in Europe had been going on for centuries, spurred on by the established churches and increasingly by governments of the new nation states. Much as we despise it today, there was a much-held view that Jews were an inferior race. The increasing anti-Jewish sentiment sweeping through Russia from the late 19th century onwards led to tens of thousands of deaths and the emigration of more than a million to the USA. As the century neared its end, the new political movement called Zionism was founded with a specific agenda being the creation of a Jewish homeland in Israel which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Soon hundreds of thousands of European Jews became active Zionists. As antisemitism continued in Europe, spurred on in part by the Dreyfus Affair in France and a fear that the world banking system was controlled by Jews, a fiction spread from Russia after WWI, many Zionists emigrated to what had by then become British controlled Palestine. But after WWII Britain was desperate to get out of Palestine. Its actions in the three years prior to the establishment of the state of Israel were utterly disgraceful but it does not disguise the fact that Israel by then was already home to a large Jewish population and more moved there, as many others were doing to their former homes in other parts of Europe as well as emigration to the USA and UK. My OP centred primarily on Iran and changing US policy towards that country. All else being equal, Iran would always be in the mix as a terrorist state in the present situation. Why it has turned from friend to foe is I believe of particular interest.

This post is very long, and I know some members abhor long posts. That’s their privilege and I suggest they simply click on to another topic. Others have in the past expressed their belief that history should be confined to the trash can. That, though, is a view with which I totally disagree. I believe passionately that we are where we are, as both individuals and nations, very largely because of past actions. And it is for that reason I wish to start a discussion on the present very dangerous situation in the Middle East. It seems to me that after the last ghastly ten days, only two countries will be metaphorically rubbing their hands in glee - Iran and Russia. The former because it is the main backer of terror in that part of the world, and Russia because finally there is a world event that takes the focus off its illegal invasion of Ukraine. I want to focus this post on Iran if only because for decades it was the USA’s only major ally in the region, yet in more recent decades it has become the USA’s sworn enemy. Having visited the country in 2018, I am aware that the average Iranian utterly loathes its regime. They are a proud, cultured and in many senses western-oriented people ruled by a totally repressive government. Yet it is one that the present generation’s fathers and mothers welcomed with an unalloyed fervour back in 1979. But with President Biden’s reason for visiting the region now totally wrecked after the horrific bombing of the Gaza Hospital, I think it best to start by looking at US involvement in the region. When I was at University in the late 1960s, the Vietnam War was at its height. Nightly on the television news, we would see graphic images of dreadful fighting and bombing. Yet, as students in the UK we rarely talked about that war. It was almost as though it had nothing to do with us. Vietnam seemed almost on another planet. We were far more interested in discussing the young state of Israel. Many of my contemporaries, almost all non-Jewish, planned to fly there to work on kibbutz over the summers. It was important to us that Israel prosper amidst a region of hostile Arabs. It was only after the 1973 Yom Kippur War that I started to think more seriously about that part of the world and why there was so much anger seemingly on all sides. To many observers, the USA has changed sides with increasing regularity and increasingly unfortunate results. During the ghastly eight-year Iraq-Iran war, the USA backed Saddam Hussein. It provided dual-use technology which could be used for both military and civilian purposes, military intelligence, special operations training and several billion dollars of economic aid. Less than two years after the stalemate which resulted, Saddam invaded Kuwait which had earlier provided him with substantial financial aid during that fight with Iran! The US turned turtle and attacked Iraq, a short war that was to be the prelude to the full-scale invasion of the country in 2003 whose disastrous effects remain to this day. Some Presidents have continued the actions of their predecessors. Decades earlier after the Russians had invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US leapt in by launching an extensive covert operation to help the Afghan Mujahadin. Using declassified documents, in 2016 Julie Lowenstein wrote US Foreign Policy and the Soviet-Afghan War: A Revisionist History. In this she makes clear that the resultant Soviet-Afghan war and in the fighting and war which followed had the US under every President from Carter to Biden playing major parts which helped launch "a cascade of devastating long-term and large-scale consequences, including the solidification of the concept of global violent jihad, the formation of Al-Qaeda and the rise of the Taliban regime." These covert US operations had exploded into the invasion of Iraq in 2003, this time under George Bush and his neocons. But there are several earlier turn-turtle events leading up to these disasters we can not forget. For three decades starting with the Eisenhower administration, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by other countries was actively encouraged by the USA. As Peter Frankopan writes in his excellent recent book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, it was a policy “whose name and aims seem today almost comical: ‘Atoms For Peace’.” This plan was devised to allow US administrations to participate in ‘an international atomic pool’; and ultimately involved friendly governments being given access to 40,000 kilograms of Uranium 233 for non-military research. It was a fundamental part of US foreign policy! Then with the Soviet Union gaining greater access in the Persian Gulf area, not content with having organised and carried out along with the British the ouster of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in the early 1952, the US decided to reinforce its backing for the Shah. Administrations paid zero attention to advice from one prominent and knowledgeable source within the region that the Shah was “a megalomaniac and highly unstable.” That was not the view of Henry Kissinger, however, who advised President Ford that the Shah was “a man of extraordinary ability and knowledge”. In 1974, the US then signed an accord with Iran to provide two nuclear reactors and a supply of enriched plutonium. In 1975 the deal was sweetened and the US agreed a deal to sell Iran eight more reactors. Ford’s Chief of Staff had no hesitation in approving the sale. That man was Dick Cheney. With the nod from the USA, France, the UK and Germany also sold Iran related nuclear technologies. In propping up Iran, it was accordingly US policy to destabilise Iraq. But Iraq had also started down the nuclear path. It had already received a nuclear research reactor from the Soviets in 1967. And it wanted a lot more, particularly from France and Italy. Soon even Kissinger had realised how the US deal with Iran could come back to haunt it. By 1976 he had turned against it. But even by the late 1970s, members of the US National Security Council stated that the US had “no visible strategic alternatives to the close relationship with Iran.” The feeling was that the US was boxed in, the more so as it had burned its bridges elsewhere in the region. Hindsight is perfect and short-termism a policy put into practice by many nations, but we surely have to wonder why the US had been so naïve by placing all its support behind the Shah, a man increasingly power hungry and loathed by his peoples. On 31 December 1977 at a dinner in Tehran, President Carter praised the “great leadership” of the Shah and the “respect and admiration and the love which your people give you.” No one in the State Department or any other branch of government realised this was a complete denial of reality. If Carter had been allowed to look out of the Embassy windows before and after his visit, he would have seen the increasing number of Iranians taking to the streets to rebel against repression, the dreaded Savak - the Shah’s secret police, massive corruption of the Shah’s family and the lack of any form of social justice. And this was unfortunate because within less than two years it had all boiled over. The street demonstrations and killings had reached such a level that the Shah had to flee, the American Embassy was stormed and many of its staff held captive in their own Embassy, and the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France to receive a hero’s welcome. By installing a religious government, Khomeini went against his own promise that clerics and religious zealots would not rule the country. Rather they would provide guidance, he had earlier claimed. So having finally realised it had been in a state of denial for years, the US awoke to find Iran was no longer a friend and ally. The Khomeini government was far stricter than even most Iranians had bargained for. Initially they were prepared to put up with it if only because they were no longer ruled by the dreaded Shah. When Iraq then invaded, they had no choice. After eight years of hideous warfare which included the use of chemical weapons and young teenage boys being sent to the front, the stalemate that ensued solidified Khomeini’s rule and ensured there would be no rebellion against his religious regime. Now Iran was a sworn enemy of the USA which then continued its backing of Iraq's Saddam. A less direct consequence was the encouragement the installation of Iran's theocratic Islamic government had provided for more extreme Muslim groups in other parts of the world, including Malaysia and Indonesia. Following World War II, it is fact that the US State Department lacked virtually any staff with much clue about Middle Eastern politics, something that basically continued for the remainder of the century. Even though it was now the world’s only superpower, it was desperate to ensure that the increasing influence of the Soviet Union in the Middle East be curbed. It was also pressured heavily by the oil lobby to ensure no disruption to the oil supplied from Iran. Consequently the decision to kick out Iran’s elected Prime Minister who had nationalised the country’s oil fields and refineries which hitherto had been in US and UK control and from which Iran received little more than a pittance in royalties. Under a 1920s agreement, Iran (then Persia) received only 16% of profits from the sale of its oil. As a result of the Great Depression, demand for oil plummeted and Persia saw its oil revenues slashed. A new agreement was reached whereby it was to receive a greater percentage of profits and a guaranteed annual fixed sum. By 1950 anger within the country at the huge profits being made by Britain and the US, the major shareholders in the Anglo-Iranian company, at the expense of Iran had increased to a dangerous level. So Iran then nationalised the oil industry. As a result several western powers deliberately stopped importing Iranian oil further angering the Iranians. It took the reinstatement of the Shah to power to turn the taps back on. But the oilfields remained nationalised. The US and the declining international power of the UK, which did believe it knew more than a little about the region, were blinded by economics and their determination to keep USSR influence out of the region. The US believed it needed a proxy in that part of the world and, as noted, Iran was basically its only hope. The oil disasters, the anti-Mosaddegh coup and support for the Shah were not the start of anti-western feelings in Iran but they brought them to a head. And we know where all this has led in 2023, not forgetting that Trump made relations much more fractious by unilaterally pulling the USA out of the 2015 seven-power nuclear agreement with Iran without consulting and obtaining agreement from the other parties. Of course, one factor that I have not even discussed is Israel and its effect on the politics of both the Middle East and the western powers. OPEC nations were determined to punish the USA for its support of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Oil became an even greater weapon. In 1970 the average price of a barrel of oil was US$2.96. By 1978 it had ballooned to $14.57. But then the Iran-Iraq war further threatened oil supplies. By 1980 the price had more than doubled to $33.86 thereby continuing the long near-recession in parts of the western world. Although many will argue against this suggestion, within the region Israel has now effectively become the only US proxy. The friendly relations that the US has been developing with countries in the Arab world are now threatened – even if only temporarily. The events of the last ten days sees the region on the verge of an abyss. The decades-long simmering of tensions between Palestinian Arabs and Israelis desperately needs some form of solution. It can no longer be placed on the back burner and a cease fire alone is not going to achieve it. Due to length I have not discussed the holocaust, the background to the state of Israel and other issues. They do deserve an airing, but I think they add only a little to the present situation.

In recent years India has been making progress - albeit slow - in giving those in the LGBTQ community more rights. Many of the country's homosexual men and women had pinned their hopes on a case heard before the country's Supreme Court in April and May putting forward the case for same-sex marriage. These were dashed today when 3 of the 5 Supreme Court Justices voted against the motion. The other two had been more in favour of civil unions rather than marriage, but that was also voted down. Calculations based on global estimates put the number of gay men and women in the country at around 100 million. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65525980

Ha! I'll be in Taipei for a week at the end of November. Maybe I can become a star 🤣 Well, it says guys over 20 but no maximum age mentioned!

Does anyone still wonder why Thaksin waited until now befiore returning to Thailand and was given a much reduced sentence for his crimes?

Thanks @moistmango for a fascinating post. Your reference to opium of course brings to mind the Opium Wars of the early 1800s when the British forced the Chinese to accept crates of opium for their exports instead of silver as mandated by Beijing. That in turn led to the ceding of Hong Kong to the British, the further decline of rotting Manchu rule, what the Chinese rightly call the "century of humiliation" when western powers took over chunks of the China coastline and imposed their own laws, the rise of nationalism with Sun Yat Sen at the forefront, the decades of uncertainty with Chiang Kao Shek and Mao finally joining forces temporarily during the horrendous atrocities of the Japanese invasion and then war, until what most Chinese felt would finally be an era of peace under the new communist rule. Little did they know that Mao was a megalomaniac in the tradition of many dictators whose ambitions created campaigns that were eventually to kill and murder an estimated 30 million Chinese, the remainder of whom continued to live in griding poverty until the excesses of the Cultural Revolution so drained the will of the people that Deng Xiao-ping was able to return to power. So opium and Deng in the 19th and 20th centuries basically shaped 21st century China.

I find that rather odd. Hong Kong has banned marijuana for many decades. Possession can carry a jail sentence of from 3 - 7 years under existing legislation. I even wonder if @moistmango's translation is correct. The characters for Hong Kong are 香港 and while the first is correct the second is not. The literal translation of the two chinese characters for Hong Kong is "Fragrant Harbour". I suspect the second is not harbour but some other character meaning something like watering hole. This video below illustrates that the marijuana industry deliberately targets Chinese tourists. But we still have to understand that the industry remains unregulated and is spiralling virtually out of control. A bill re regulation got caught up in the dissolution of parliament prior to the election and was never passed into law. Hence the speedy mushrooming (😵) of shops all over the country and concerns that almost anything can be sold as marijuana and purchasers will get ripped off by bad actors who have taken advantage of the climate of zero regulation. No doubt that is why the present PM is pressing to open up the debate again and have its sale restricted. Even Anutin has promised to roll back the 'open door' that he himself led the charge to open.

In all my many visits to Tokyo I have never heard of this shop. Perhaps because Shibuya is an expensive district and not known to have more than an occasional small gay bar. But I see it is mentioned on some of the international gay websites and the reviews that have been posted are generally extremely good. Seems their masseurs are better built than the shops offering lots of twinks, they are handsome, speak at least some good English and have very good massage skills. The only thing not mentioned are happy endings. In the descriptions of the boys, there are three different symbols re their being top, bottom or neither but I can see no explanation apart from X being rather obvious. Only two descriptions have English translation and so it is difficult to know. As there are so few masseurs, I suspect this may be a shop for genuine massage with only a bit of eroticism added - but a Japanese speaker may offer a more accurate description.

That's a question that has been asked in this forum for many years - over more than a decade. I suggest it is in part the government and the elite. They have increasingly disliked Thailand being called the sex capital of Asia and have taken action to clamp down on it. This was the primary reason for Interior Minister Purachai's Social Order campaigns two decades ago. Restrictions were then placed on nightlife. While this may have resulted in little change over the longer term provided the increasingly fat brown envelopes were regularly handed over, it did make in particular the gay venue owners think twice about their businesses. It is also in large part due to the bar owners themselves. They had a business model. When business fell off the only way they knew how to adapt was to raise prices to cover their shortfall. The attitude of the bar owners to a certain extent reflects that of Thai society as a whole, in my view. Having done business in this country for many years, there is clearly an in-built reluctance - some might say fear - of change. In one Thai company in which I have been involved over almost four decades, I have seen overseas consultants and experts brought in to write reports and offer constructive suggestions for change and development. In large part it has been money down the drain for so few recommendations were acted on. When I have asked top management the reason, I always get the response, "They don't understand Thailand!" It is a recurring refrain I hear with some frequency. Similarly, I believe bar owners are afraid of change in case it brings their business tumbling down. Then there was the drying up of the supply of young Thai guys ready and willing to be bar boys, especially in the go-go bars. The country's rapidly rising economic growth offered lads from up country more opportunities for gainful employment away from the rice paddies and village stores. Those prepared to work in the bars expect considerably more for their services than in the past. Thus the gradual influx into the bars of young guys from neighbouring countries, many without proper visas. The question I have never seen asnwered, though, is this: why is it that the gay venues have been reduced and yet it seems the establishments offering the services of young ladies continue to thrive? Or so it seems. Is this because the majority of new customers for gay bars, especially those from North and South East Asia, are much less interesting in offs from gogo bars? They tend to be younger than the westerners who mostly frequented bars two and three decades ago and much more interested in a spa experience followed by a bar show followed by dancing somewhere.

100% no!

I for one certainly don't feel in the slightest bit bitter about the past being gone. I'm just glad I was in Bangkok in those particular years and have so many extremely fond memories, some great. Nostalgia is part of our existence. Thankfully we all move on and experience a myriad of new things as we age.

I'm sure it is. But you mentioned your interest in being transported back 25 years when there were quite a few more bars staffed with lots more guys much more skimpily dressed than is the case today. Same with the best-known massage spas which have disappeared, many fondly remembered like Hero, Albury and Adonis each of which (if I remember correctly) usually had quite a few more masseurs. Same also with gay saunas, with Babylon being the most lamented casualty. Going back an extra few years, some months ago a member posted a list from one of the free mags that used to be available in many gay venues which listed even more bars with more bar boys, and not all in the Silom-Suriwong axis . Taking just one, Barbiery on Suriwong opposite the entrance to Soi Twilight often had 100 young guys working at the week-ends. Nudity and more adventurous, fun shows were the norm. Not sure if Twilight had as many guys in 1993 but it certainly had 60-70 a few years before then. But times change, society changes, government regulations have changed and the economics of gay venues have changed particularly in the face of competition from the apps. Also, as I have mentioned before in several posts, the customer base has changed. 30 years ago Thais virtually made up a majority of bar customers. We live in different times.

Note that the present Prime Minster is on record as saying he plans to change the law back to what it was within 6 months - i.e. medical use only. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/29/asia/thailand-cannabis-clampdown-what-next-intl-hnk/index.html

While we're at it, let's make it 30 years when the Bangkok gay scene was really hot and humming.

On the few occasions i visited Pattaya 15-25 years ago, there was always the possibility of finding attractive guys on the beach wearing skimpy trunks, especially in the late afternoons. In addition to the boys who came down to play a sort of volleyball, there was usually the accasional cruiser. There was also a host bar - Bamboo Bar? - located around the corner from the Police Box which was open in the afternoons. The gay area of the beach was then quite busy with cheap drinks and food available.

And that then becomes the bank's fault?

Sadly not so easy or cheap in many Asian countries like Thailand.

I'm sure we've all read the news about Paris and how bedbugs seem to have taken over the city. Now sightings are reported on the London underground. Unlike Bangkok, Hong Kong and many other cities, London's Tube cars have upholstered seating. Ideal for bedbugs to lurk and then climb on to whatever you are wearing. Before you know it, they have crept on to your bed, found a nice little niche and start to breed. They bite but to most people the bites are painless. They just leave red marks on the skin. The problem is essentially twofold: they breed like crazy and they are very difficult and usually expensive to eliminate. Bangkok is not immune to their infestation. Anyone who travels has a high chance of having bedbugs in their hotel/B&B beds. Put your clothes or suicases on to the bed and they will hitch a lift. Next thing you know you have brought some of these highly resilient buggers back to your home. Never put your suitcase and clothes on the bed and always keep the case firmly closed. As the following article from The Guardian points out, bedbugs "are incredibly good hitchkikers." The fact is that bedbugs have been around in most countries for centuries. The present rise in numbers seems to be associated with climate change and an increasing resistance to insectocides like DDT which was used to eliminate them decades ago. If you think you have found one or more, strip the bed and immediately get the bedclothes to a professional cleaner. Also get a pest control company in fast. It may not get rid of it/them at the first cleaning. That's why it can become quite expensive. Leave it too late and they will find their way into your furniture. As the article points out, we live in "a bug's world." We'll never get rid of them all. But we can take precautions to make sure this lot do not take up residence in our homes. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/french-bedbugs-britain-insects

Sorry I cannot remember despite having been there several times. Each time i was in dark jeans, a Polo shirt and sneakers. No probems. I suspect Hawaiian shirts and shorts may not be not permitted.