PeterRS

Back in the mid-1980s one of the dozens of boys who worked in Twilight was half Thai and half American. Since most of the customers in those days were Thais, perhaps he was very popular.

I play every time I am in Hong Kong. The Mark 6 draw is three times a week with a minimum top prize each time of US$1 million. Since there is no top prize winner in 6 out of 10 draws and the Jockey Club which runs the lottery adds addtional Snowball amounts several times a year, most top prize winners receive more than that million. The highest amount ever won was US$11,840,180. (But I wouldn't quibble if I only won that million!) No idea how much i have spent over many years and the most I ever won was just under US$6. The consolation is that most of that lottery's profits go to needy social welfare causes.

For a decade around 1990, there was a popular TV series that regularly placed Bangkok's then-named Oriental Hotel (now the Mandarin Oriental) as the best in the world. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was a cloying peaen to all those places none of us could afford to visit hosted by the equally cloying Robin Leech. Since then world class hotels have opened all over the place. Virtually the only one I ever stayed in (apart from The Oriental in Bangkok which was business-related and free!) was the gloriously understated Park Hyatt in Tokyo, the hotel where director Sophia Coppola filmed much of her lovely movie Lost in Translation with Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson. That visit was also technically free as I blew almost my entire stash of Hyatt points. But I adored the hotel. Now a new Organisation called The World's 50 Best Hotel Academy made up of 580 hoteliers, hotel industry experts and travel journalists has come up with its first 50 best hotels list. Perhaps not surprisingly 4 of the top 5 - and 5 of the top 10 - are in Asia. 9 more Asian hotels are included in the full list. Top spot goes to a small hotel bordering Lake Como in Italy, Passalacqua. The next four are The Rosewood Hong Kong, Four Seasons Bangkok (the new one by the river), The Upper House Hong Kong (which used to be a block of serviced apartments above the centrally located Marriott Hotel before being converted into a luxury hotel) and Aman in Tokyo. In 10th place is Bangkok's Mandarin Oriental. This lower ranking does not surprise me as the rooms in the new wing (well, new in the mid-1970s) are now pretty much on the small side. Definitely surprising to me is a hotel and hotel chain I have never heard of before - Capella. Capella Bangkok on the river comes 11th and another great river hotel the much more Thai-styled The Siam located up river from the Royal Palace comes in at 42nd. Capella Singapore is at 28 whereas the one other Singapore-listed hotel Raffles is at 17. The 101 room Capella Bangkok - which to me looks like a block in a housing estate. Even the pool looks extremely small! Celebrated older hotels no longer have their shine. London's top hotels are Claridges at 16, The Connaught at 22, NoMad at 46 and The Savoy at 47. Neither the Ritz in Paris or London are on the list, but Paris has four other hotels. Only one New York hotel is listed - the Aman. Few if any of us will have any chance at staying at any of these hotels unless we win a lottery or had bought shares in Berkshire Hathaway half a century ago. In my case, I am not really a fan of top hotels even if someone else pays. I was once on a business trip to New York with a client who was on the Board of Sheraton in Asia. He had booked us into the St. Regis on 5th Avenue. We were arriving on different flights from an earlier visit to Las Vegas - me taking a roundabout route with 3 flights to maximise airline points. When I arrived at LGA late in the evening, my suitcase had missed a connection. So I arrived at the St. Regis and was ushered into a small suite looking virtually like a tramp. Having underwear and socks cleaned at the overnight laundry was more expensive than buying them new. And at breakfast wearing a red sweat shirt and blue jeans amid a plethora of bespoke-suited businessmen, I felt utterly stupid! Full list here - https://edition.cnn.com/travel/world-50-best-hotels-2023-cmd/index.html

What a load of PR nonsense! There was a time when all Thai Ministers and their spouses were entitled to free first class travel everywhere on THAI. I believe that was finally suspended some years ago. But rather difficult to sit in first class when there is no first class seating! Another piece of PR spin aka b/s! With TG having no flights in to New York, the Prime Minister would certainly have looked foolish descending the steps of a JAL, Korean or other nation's aircraft. So a charter from a Thai aircraft will no doubt have seemed the only other solution. Pity the government did not check. The answer has to be a very resounding 'yes'. Or he could have taken a regular non-stop THAI flight to London and then taken an executive jet from there. The cost of a mid-size executive jet for that round trip would be no more than US$100,000 So they paid their pro rata share of 30 million baht? I'll put a lot of money on the table that that is nothing like what they paid!

And the world actually believes this is the reason? It is Chinese propaganda. The real reason is that he will have angered Xi in some way and Xi absolutely does not tolerate that from ministers, senior or not.

As the richest man in the world, Musk clearly thinks he can do or say anything he wants. He has been wooing China for quite some time as he wants to open Tesla plants there. So naturally he has been spouting off his desire to see China reunified with Taiwan. A possible problem for Musk is that if he plans to sell in China he faces competition. The Chinese BYD company of which Warren Buffet is a shareholder sells more electric vehicles than Musk's company. But it does so because it keeps profit margins low and therefore the price is cheaper. SInce 2015, EV prices in China have dropped by 50% and now stand at around $32,000. Similarly an EV is priced around 27% lower than a petrol car. According to the US Environment Protection Agency, the average cost of an EV in the USA this year is $37,300 and that cost is more expensive than a petrol car. Little doubt that he plans to export his Chinese made Teslas, if he gets the relevant permits to open factories. There are still many companies around the world where the EV market is either in its infancy or is non-existent.

It's been splashed over all the newspapers. China is in a mess - certainly economically and almost certainly politically as well. Local governments are mired in debt. The two largest property developers are quickly drowning in monstrous debts, they cannot sell much of their inventory and have been unable to complete many that Chinese citizens have already paid for. This has led to at least one riot. Almost 12% of recent graduates cannot find jobs. With youth unemployment already at 20.4% in April this year, so many are out of work that the state has now ceased publishing statistics. President Xi's admonition that, as during Mao's Cultural Revolution, these young people should go and work in the countryside has met with derision. In an age of social media, China cannot clamp down on all dissent despite the huge numbers it employs to censor it. Just a year ago Xi was elected to an unprecendented third 5-year term in office. Before then he made sure he was surrounded by his own cronies. Many top government and other officials had been jailed for corruption beforehand, although corruption remains virtually endemic. Now, though, even those he placed in top leadership posts are disappearing. Recently, two of Xi's hand-picked five state councillors - five who enjoy a higher rank in the cabinet than ordinary ministers - have disappeared. Some weeks ago Foreign Minister Qin Gang was ousted after vanishing for more than a month. Three weeks ago Defense MInister Li Shangfu sudenly disappeared, despite having been promoted to his position only in March. Next, the removal of two top generals has shocked the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, the elite unit set up by Xi to modernize the country's armed forces. The lack of transparency in these disappearances and forced resignations is not new in China. The high level of all four coming at one time is of particular concern, though, given that Xi himself has also chosen not to attend international gatherings where once he was lauded. Some analysts point to Xi's own power being diminished and his leadership abilities questioned within the Party. Is he now afraid of what might happen to his position if he were to leave China? All this at a time when China is playing a much tougher game overseas with its alliances with Russia and North Korea and its increased sabre-rattling over Taiwan. Rahm Emanuel, the US Ambassador to Japan, has compared what is going on internally to an Agatha Christie novel "And Then There Were None". How much he actually knows about what is happening in China is clearly open to question, but he himself has asked another question, "Who's going to win this unemployment race? 'China's youth or Xi's cabinet?'" Perhaps a question aimed more at a US audience, but it is one being increasingly discussed in other parts of the world. And all this still baffles those who recall that Xi's father, a participant in the Long March and a pal of Mao who made him Vice Premier, was a man lauded for his moderation. He was an early proponent of the easing of control over Xinjiang and Tibet, even having the Dalai Lama to stay at his home when he visited Beiiing. What has turned the younger Xi into a self-styled Mao? Is it because his father was purged, jailed and spent long periods in confinement during the Cultural Revolution? How iong can the younger Xi last? Will he make a bid for internal harmony by going to war with Taiwan as a means of taking attention away from the severe jobs and other crises he faces? My own view is that within China there are enough citizens who would baulk at Chinese fighting Chinese and the massive death toll that would result. But that's already the subject of another thread. Based on this article on the CNN website - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/19/china/china-top-ranks-turbulence-questions-xi-intl-hnk/index.html

And he tried his hand at midget submarines which did not work. When told they were an idiotic idea during the Thai cave boys rescue, he called the one man who knew of the cave and did as much as anyone to free those boys and their coach a "pedo". He was taken to court in Los Angeles but successfully argued that "pedo" does not mean pedophile (which we all know is precisely what he meant); rather it is a slang term in his native South Africa meaning "a creepy old man who does not have sex with children." And to think the judge bought that! I wonder who bought the judge!

Goodness! So many memories! I stayed at the Royal Orchid Sheraton several times soon after it opened in the early 1980s and had the hots for one of the pool boys He came from Khon Kaen and one day I took him on his first plane trip to and from his home town. Got to know him well and he was such a lovely young man in more ways than one! One of those beautiful elegant buildings next to the hotel was and remains the residence of the Portuguese Ambassador where I once attended a reception. Portugal was the first European nation to come into contact with what was then the Kingdom of Ayutthaya. When the nation became Siam and the capital moved to Bangkok, it was granted the land where the then new colonial-style Embassy was to be located by the river. The present building remains the oldest diplomatic building and residence in the country. Some years ago it leased part of its land so the Royal Orchid could expand its always small pool area. Never went to Noriega's in Silom Soi 4. Looks as though it was next to the Sphinx restaurant and bar which was popular mostly with expats and visitors. Above either Noriega's or Sphinx was a karaoke bar for several years. A long time before then that karoke was I believe Apollo, one of the original gogo bars where, as in Twilight, after a certain hour - around 10:00 pm or so - the mamasan would instruct all the boys to start dancing nude. Unlike Twilight where many of the many dozens of boys seemed a bit embarassed being nude up on its tiny stage, the boys in Apollo seemed really to enjoy prancing up and down the catwalk with no pants on. I really loved that bar! He mentions Lumphini Stadium. Next to it bordering Witthayu was the old Night Market. I visited often, partly to buy small gifts if I was travelling, often to dine at one of the eateries but also to take visiting friends to one of the great Bangkok entertainments, the Joe Louis Thai Puppet Theatre, so named because the owner was a fan of the great boxer. The theatre had large half size puppets with the manipulators visible and dressed in black. Mostly the 'plays' were based on Hindu and Buddhist legends. But the performances were of a very high standard and all the guests I took absolutely loved it. When the Night Market closed, the Puppet Theatre moved to Pattaya for a while. It eventually moved to Asiatique. It seems to be closed but if not and if you have not seen the shows, I recommend them most highly. And the flooding! In the small sub-soi outside my apartment, the floods would come almost over my wellington boots (gumboots) and remain long after the heavy rain had stopped. It was soon after the disastrous floods of 2011 that the city government finally raised the level of our soi and installed much larger underground piping. Since then flooding has been a thing of the past, thankfully. Many thanks @fedssocr for posting. Now if only we could find some similar video of the early 1980s.

I wondered about that. But Golden Week is the following week starting on National Day on October 1, several days after my planned return. It is also exclusively a holiday within China when almost all businesses and factories close down for the entire week and so travel at the start would be out of China. Basically it's the opposite of Chinese New Year. There are no public holidays in Thailand during Golden Week. So I think it's unikely that many Thai-Chinese would be travelling, especially at the start of the week prior to Golden Week. I could be wrong - but it still doesn't really explain why prices suddenly went up so quickly by so much. My outward flight was supposed to be Tuesday 26. Looking at the seating availability, it's the outward flights to HKG that are almost full. Flights HKG/BKK on my planned return date of Friday 29 are mostly less than a third full. Not sure if there are major holidays in other parts of the world.

I agree with the first sentence. For some, a boyfriend is in effect a long-term partner where the two share a life, live together, perhaps are married but have certainly been together for many years. For others, like me, a committed relationship may be over a shorter period of time where we do not live together but spend one or two days/nights a week together. In our case, this is basically because my boyfriend's work is very far from my condo. This will change as he is about to fulfil his dream of a masters degree at a European University and then a good job somewhere on the continent. Such is a problem sometimes faced by those with much younger boyfriends. Then there are those in a committed relationship but who live in different countries. And so on. But I disagree with @TotallyOz when he suggests that 95% of "boyfriends" are "whores". That may be true of some or even many, but it is certainly not true of even 95%. When I met my boyfriend chatting through an app suggested to him by a gay friend, he had never been to any gay venue and never met another man for sex. Since we met, we have never been to any bar or spa or whatever. He does sometimes go out with gay Thai friends, but the furthest he gets is drinks at Balcony bar. On the other hand, if by "whore" @TotallyOz means one party pays cash to the other, then this has to be partly true when one party comes from a relatively wealthy background - relative to the background of the other. It is ridiculous to suggest that each pay his own way when dining out, going to iMax movies, travelling both in Thailand and overseas. But in my view that is not and can not be equated to "whoring". Besides there are some partnerships I know of where the Thai may be 40 years younger than the farang but is considerably more wealthy. Does that make the farang a whore? So to carp over the meaning of the word "boyfriend" is, I think, totally unnecessary and pointless.

Fair point.

It seems I was wrong in my thoughts re CX. In just three days the prices for travel to HKG any day next week on CX have doubled! Mind you, other carriers are in the same boat. I was supposed to go to HKG next week but have postponed to the second week of October when flights and hotels are much more reasonable. And biz class flights on QR from BKK to the UK in March have also started to jump up. I just changed my trip from March to May at a very considerable saving.

I am sure they are. But it is also surely rather offputting for less well off retirees not to mention that there are in fact other options. This is precisely the point I was making in reply to @Mavica's post and the suggestion that many expats are skirting the regulations.

No! VN Express got its figures rather screwed up. As has been stated in this forum many times, the rules for one-year retirement visas available after age 50 are monthly income 65K baht (making annual income remittance of US$21,800) or annual amount in an account of 800K (US$22,400) for 5 months reducing for 7 months to US$11,200). The Golden Visa is a completely separate programme somewhat similar to the expensive Thailand Elite programmes. The benefit of the latter is they offer multi-year visas. The basic retirement visa is one-year renewable.

As a glass 'half full' guy, @vinapu is never sad!

More surprises! 🤣🤣🤣

Should it be slightly less surpising given that this is the first pageant since the death of the founder and the purchase of the Mister International franchise by a Thai company with a Thai President?

This has been the case in Europe for at least a decade and probably a lot more and involves more airines than just BA. I think it also applies in some cases to flights to Asia. Never fly from your usual departure city. Get a cheap flight to some nearby cities (but not all) and start the journey from there. 8 years ago I flew London to Chicago on BA but started in and returned to Berlin. The fare was much cheaper than LHR/ORD/LHR. I have never worked out the rationale for this! I understand all airlines now do this! Decades ago I would purchase round-trip tickets for Japanese clients who wanted to fly TYO/JFK return. A ticket with extra coupons to and from HKG was at least a third cheaper. In those days you could tear up the first and last sector coupons. But when actual tickets disappeared and computers took over everything, miss that first sector and the computer deleted all the remaining sectors. In fact miss any sector without informing the ticketing airline and the rest of your trip disappears. Another dodge in those days was flying BA from Macao before Macao got its own airport. BA had some sort of deal with Portugal whereby return tickets starting and ending with a jetfoil Macao to HKG and then BA from/to HKG to/from Lisbon via LHR had a massive discount. First class return on BA was actually less than business class HKG/LHR/HKG. On the few occasions I used this routing, the jetfoil tickets ended up in the trash!

Never created one. I'm sure it will have a box for 'others'. If there is no way to explain what 'others' stand for, psters can easily respond with a new post in the usual manner.

What happened to all the others? 😵 Or is this just another to add to the harem? 🙏 (couldn't resist!

Many thanks for that post @fedssocr. Sadly airlines based in North and South America seem generally to have much better deals for passengers into Asia than those based in Asia for travel to Europe and the Americas.

Allied to this topic, i find there is almost nothing worse when on a beach holiday than to go to the seating area and find all the loungers either occupied (usually just a few) and the others with unfurled towels, books and other paraphernalia to 'book' them for later use. If at a hotel I cannot count the number of times I have registered complaints and nothing is done. The same happens around swimming pools. Sometimes, the selfish idiots who have 'bagged' these chairs decide not even to use them. They return a few hours later just to retrieve their belongings. If seating/loungers are for use by all guests, personal items placed to 'bag' seats should be removed and placed in a location where they can be later retrieved.

On that we agree!

In that case, lobby your MP to change the national insurance rules. You are obeying them as they exist now. I obeyed them as advised when I started working - and yes, I started in the UK. Had I been informed of a change, I could have elected to cease paying annual national insurance contributions and put the cash into better savings funds instead.