PeterRS

More arrant nonsense! Earlier in the thread @Moses stated in response to a comment by @readerthat "when you have no arguments, you helplessly switching to me and Russia." Well now @Moses has done just that - switched! Since he knows he can not win any argument about Myanmar, suddenly he brings Libya into the discussion when it has not appeared before. And what has Libya to do with Myanmar? Precisely nothing! I say again - PRECISELY NOTHING! The histories of the two countries could not be more different. The peoples of the two countries are totally different. The governments of the two countries are and have been totally different. Do you know how many different ethnic groups there are in Myanmar? Do you know how many there are in Libya? Obviously not. So let me enlighten you. In Libya the Arab/Berber population accounts for roughly 97% of the entire country. Since there was so much intermarriage between the two groups, it is impossible to separate them. Now I ask: how many different ethnic groups are there in Myanmar? Most would probably assume that as China's population is 26 times larger than Myanmar's, it would have considerably more different ethnic groups than Myanmar. China actually has 56 major ethnic groups. Myanmar, on the other hand, has 135. So how does that have any relevance to Libya? Nothing! The west is not "destroying" Myanmar, as you claim. Successive military juntas have been doing that for nearly eight decades. Britain provided aid to the new independent democratic Burma until the military coup in 1962. Along with many world governments it ceased assistance until democracy was fully restored. It is an end to Russian-style dictatorship and a return to democracy that the state militias are now fighting for. PS: I notice you changed your post and added a new last paragraph after reading my post. Afraid to make a new post?

@Moses - before you make statements like this, do you not realise that Myanmar is the fourth largest country in East Asia? Only Mongolia, China and Indonesia are larger. It is, for example twice the size of Japan and also of Vietnam. And yet you claim that you saw what was happening with your own eyes when there - for a funeral? So in one short visit to one tiny part of that huge country, you saw what was happening in the country as a whole? Do you seriously expect us to believe that? (I suppose you do, which says something about your posts!) As for news, I suggest you update what you have been reading for it is hugely out of date! My partner is from Myanmar. He has a whole bunch of relatives in Myanmar. I take what he tells me as the truth for the tiny part of Myanmar where they are based. But I do not then upsize that and assume it is reflective of the country as a whole. That would be the height of stupidity. I also happen to read a great deal. I am writing a book about the country, its history and its present state. My book will never be more than a snapshot, I fully accept that. There are excellent histories on Burma/Myanmar by scholars like Thant Mint-U which anyone really interested in the country shouid definitely read. But my snapshot is a great deal more honest than yours!

What nonsense @Moses sometimes spouts! Britain was one of the first countries to provide financial aid to help relief efforts. Yes, Russia provided relief teams and commendable that was. China, Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and other countries, though, have also sent relief teams, but they have been severely hampered by the junta's forces! While the shadow National Unity Government has announced a two-week ceasefire, the junta did not agree and has continued to use its air force to bomb civilians every day since the earthquake struck! Those attempting to assist in rescue efforts under horrific circumstances have been massively hampered by the junta's inaction. Britain, Australia and the EU have agreed funding. But then as the Myanmar government is in the pocket of Russia, naturally the junta gives prominence to what Russia is doing!

Wrong! The junta's territory is far from safe. @Moses has not been checking the news over the last 18 months. The local state militias have made sweeping gains over the junta forces. Since June 2024, the local militias have swept the junta out of virtually all its territory in by far the largest of the country's states, Shan State in the east. Lashio, the strategically vital gateway to China, fell in June/July. This was acknowledged by the junta on August 5. Since Shan State is the key to trade with China, this was a huge reversal for the junta. In Rakhine State in the south, the local Arakhan Army now controls most of the state. Strategically after the fall of the junta's last outpost at Maungdaw it now controls the entire length of the border with Bangladesh. In Karen State on the Thai border, the junta's forces have spent a year attempting to recapture control of the main trade route between Kawkareik and Myawaddy and the Thai border. They continue to be totally bogged down and continue to suffer major casualties. I could go on and on, but my point is made. The August 2024 map below shows those major towns captured from the junta up to that date, the area of the country out of junta control, and the much smaller part still within its control. Since that date, the local militias now control even more of the country. @Moses is unlikely to acknowledge that the junta's main weapon it is air force - much financed by Russia along with the provision of other weapons. Last year the junta leader Min Aung Hlaing visited Moscow, his fourth official visit to Russia since the 2021 coup. Russia already exports oil to the junta and uses Myanmar to supply oil to China as a means of getting around western sanctions. In return for assistance, Russia has been promised rights to extract minerals from Myanmar's conflict zones and to build an oil refinery at the coastal city of Dawei. Putin meets the junta leader in Moscow: photo Associated Press Both parties to the conflict (well, perhaps that should read "many" as the local militias basically operate independently even though there is now a National Unity Government which consists mostly of some elected in the 2021 General Election and were then booted out after the junta coup) are concerned about China. Unlike many rebel governments, the NUG members have not fled overseas. This is not a government in exile although it does maintain representative offices in many countries including the USA, Japan, South Korea, the UK, France, Norway, Australia and others. These help it raise funds for the militias. The members still remain, well protected, in Myanmar, though. Yet Washington still refuses to recognize the NUG and is withholding US$1 billion held in the Federal Reserve to the country's democratic representatives. The primary concern of the anti-junta forces is that China already has massive investments in the country and it is a key part of President Xi's Belt & Road initiative. After for some years providing finance to both sides, China called the parties together twice last year to meetings in Yunnan Province in an attempt to broker a ceasefire. It even sent its Foreign Minister Wang Yi to one to talk direectly with the junta leader. Both meetings failed. With the border area between the two countries in the northern Kachin State now controlled by the Kachin Independence Army following their victories against the junta in November 2024, China is indeed increasingly concerned. The last thing it wants is instability on its Myanmar border. It has said it will support the junta at least until promised elections later this year. No one in Myanmar expects these elections to be held. That perhaps is a degree of relief for China's stated position because the last thing it wants for Myanmar is a democratic government that leans more to the west than to China.

You really have to wonder why it has taken years and years and years for anyone to think about this! A unified communication strategy is an utterly vital part of all disaster planning - indeed of all planning. Yet every government department and NGO in Thailand seems to think it has a divine right to communicate its own thinking on any issue. Why, of why, oh why will Thailand continue always to go it alone without bringing in overseas experts for desperately needed advice on policy and planning? It's not rocket science!

I did see Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman a couple of months after "Phantom" opened. Crawford in particular was perfect for the role but I have never really liked Sarah Brightman's voice much. I don't know why but I also never really liked the show! The end of Act 1 with the chandelier is a great coup de theatre, and Maria Bjornson's sets were superb. But I found much of the show quite boring, including the first 20 minutes! Interestingly Crawford had also been a boy soprano and appeared in a Britten opera. He was considered for Miles in "The Turn of The Screw" but it went to David Hemmings instead. Yes, I also loved the Robert Wise film of "West Side Story". I bought the soundtrack album and sang the songs for weeks after! Interesting that Bernstein 'borrowed' some small parts of the score from major classical works. He even uses Wagner's redemption motif from his massively long "Gotterdammerung", the last of the four operas in the Ring cycle, for Maria's song "I have a love . . ." I quite like this version from Barbra Streisand's 2nd Broadway album which starts with Johnny Mathis singing the theme. I had been so looking forward to the Spielberg movie. I assumed there would be some updating but had forgotten that the musical is very much of its time with major redevelopments of much of New York's Upper West Side and the Puerto Rican gangs. The music was great but I left the cinema feeling that something had been missing. It always amazes me that "Cats" has been such a worldwide sensation. Neither Mackintosh nor Lloyd Webber thought it would be more than a modest success. Then their usual big investors failed to come up with cash as they believed the show would never get them back even their initial investment. It was only financed by small investors and Lloyd Webber taking out a second mortgage on his home to complete the initial financing of £450,000. Anyone investing in the original production would have made a profit of well over 3,500% by now - and the cheques keep coming!

With all respect, I do think you must be confusing the bar and/or the owner. He was the most pleasant of guys. After dinner at Dick's, a friend and I used to go almost every Sunday for around 18 months until the bar closed. We got to know him well and we never saw him stop anyone from visiting that bar - or even raise his voice at anyone. There was never a show - apart from the semi-pro dancers - so there was no nudity and the bar rarely had more than ten or so customers, some occasionally with cute young boyfriends. We also never once saw him asking for ID cards to prove age. The German owner certainly owned/managed two or three bars. I think I only visited the upstairs one. This was usually packed at the weekends with lots of chairs being added. and certainly had lots of gogo dancers. We all assumed at the time that he was making a mint of money with those bars. Does anyone recall Classic Boys near the end of Soi Twilight? More of a twink bar with a large water tank behind the stage filled with pretty murky water. I felt sorry for the two or three boys who had to swim in it. It was rumoured this was owned by a cop. For a few weeks it had to be closed after a fire in the apartment above. The owner then farmed the boys out to other bars for those weeks, one of whom we met in Solid bar - a lovely young man, beautiful face and body and extremely good English. We assumed he was around 25. Later I learned that he was about 34, married with two kids. Yet he was a fantastic off - as I can attest!

Inspired by @Olddaddy's thread under Gay Pattaya, I wonder if those who have visited Bangkok or lived here have memories of people and places in the city. I have written in other threads about bars in the 1980s and 90s. One character I recall was the Englishman who ran X-Treme Bar in Soi Twilight for a couple of years or so in the early 2000s, a man with a full head of white hair. There was a rumour that he had been associated in some way with the Church of England! His bar never had many customers, but at least he tried something different. In addtion to a small number of actual gogo boys, he hired about 8 dance students to present a proper show with sort-of semi professional-level dance numbers. The problem was that show desperately needed a producer. The pauses between eaeh dance number were far too boringly long. I can no longer recall his name. What I do remember is that his student boyfriend would occasionally come to sit in the bar and he was drop dead gorgeous! When X-Treme closed, the dancers moved across the soi for a while to the German's (can't recall his name either) downstairs bar. I last saw the Englishman in Roxy in Soi 4. I wonder if anyone remembers Khun An who was one of the original lovely bar tenders in Telephone. I met up with him when he went to London for a few years to help a friend with a Thai restaurant. Then he came back and some will recall he became a partner and Head Waiter in the lovely little French restaurant off Soi Saladaeng, La Table de Tee. Sadly this became a victim of covid. Lost track of him now.

I knew he had worked with Britten and performed with him in several of his works at Britten's Festival in Aldeburgh. Britten had, shall we say, a 'reputation' with boys but Hemmings always stated that nothing had ever occurred between them other than as composer and singer. With all your experience of musicals, I wonder which one/s you liked best? Stephen Sondheim's "Company" is almost certainly at the top of my list. I saw it in London with the late, great Elaine Stritch and Larry Kert. A revival of Sondeim's "Follies" in New York is near the top. I loved a National Theatre production of "Guys and Dolls". Unfortunately, we had tickets for the evening after Princess Diana had died. That somewhat tempered our enjoyment. But an earlier NT production of "Carousel" was quite superb, one where an actual carousel is built on stage during the overture. Patricia Routlege singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone" had quite a few in the audience with tears in their eyes. My list would also include "A Chorus Line", "West Side Story", "Hair" and the Broadway production of "Sweeney Todd" with Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou. Perhaps surprisingly, I aso loved "La Cage aux Folles" with Gene Barry and the incomparable George Hearn - and saw it twice! I had seen the earlier French film and doubted it would work as a musical. I found it gloriously camp, lovingly directed and it has the most amazingly tuneful music by Jerry Herman.

17 years ago I took the wonderful Rocky Mountaineer train from Vancouver to Banff. There was an overnight stop in Kamloops in the mountains, a place I had never heard of. The train stopped around 6:00pm and we were bused to a hotel. A few days earlier I had been checking Kamloops on the apps when I noticed one cute Chinese guy. We got in touch. End result. We spent a lovely quite unexpected evening together at the hotel. Another encounter was in Cusco in Peru. I was there for 3 nights, with a train to Macchu Pichu on my last day. Having flown from Lima at sea level to an elevation of around 3,500 meters, all the guide books tell you to rest for the first five hours on arrival to help avoid altitude sickness. I was suprised to see oxygen bottles at the airport! I read on my bed for a couple of hours and then decided to hit the apps even though I had no intention of meeting up with anyone. I was merely curious. Chatted to one lovely guy who was a student doing part time work in a bar. We hooked up the following day and it was another wonderfully unexpected encounter. Another 'surprise' was to discover that Chengdu is one of the gayest cities in China - at least in respect of the number of hits I was getting on apps. Impossible to keep up with the demand!!

This discussion started with an article - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/31/trump-administration-hiv-research-grant-cuts That you decide to misinterpret it, go ahead! We know your methods.

Seems to be only for American tax payers. Did I miss something? I assuned from the thread title it meant the Thai taxes due to be paid by expats living in Thailand.

The article was nothing about Jakarta. It was specifically about HIV cuts affecting only Trump's own people in the USA.

Of course getting a country's finances in order is one of the prime duties of an eected government, one too many leaders do not take seriously e.g. Britain under the last lot of incompetent leaders. But how does cutting the minuscule budget for HIV research have any effect whatever, other than to make life more miserable for more Americans in the long run? This is more true when you consider that Trump will undoubtedly, as he did in his first administration, cut taxes for the mega rich? So with one hand he saves a bunch of tiny peanuts and with the other he doles out massive amounts of government money which he fails to tax. Wasn't it Warren Buffett who said that his secretary paid more in taxes than he did??? Similarly the cutting off of aid to Myanmar, a country so desperate by decades of a brutal civil war the likes of which the world has rarely seen since WWII, is surely self defeating. Not providing aid for earthquake relief is bad enough when other smaller countries have tried to help as best they can, albeit with no assistance whatever from the Myanmar military government. In the longer term, strategically and historically both Democrats and Republicans have done virtually nothing whatever for Myanmar other than ensure that it is likely to end up in China's camp eventually. Given that it is the fourth largest country in East Asia, that seems exceedingly foolish. A plague on both their houses!

As I have previously written somewhere, this is the height of stupidity! Expats who live here already have to complete an online form not later than 36 hours after each arrival back in Thailand. This requires exactly the same information as the TDAC but has our address automatically included. So in future we'll have to lie about our residence prior to departure for Thailand and then be honest with a different address after arrival. Ridiculous!

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If Trump 2 is anything like Trump 1, Musk will probably be out the door sooner rather than later! 🤣

Why does anyone actually take the time to watch @bucknaway's silly vdos filled with hate speech. it just encourages him. His childishness becomes obvious with the volume of these posts. Just ignore him and ignore them! Children like attention. Don't give it to them and they go away and sulk!

I used to love just wandering along the little paths through the rice paddies hearing in the distance the faint sounds of gamelan orchestras practicing, first on one side, then on another. It was all so calm and peaceful. In the evenings, we'd join villagers for shadow puppet plays or the dancers who put on displays of various dances, including the young boys who danced the warrior Baris Dance. I read somewhere that Walter Spies had choreographed along with a Balinese the wild Kecak Dance. During my first visits, these would involve up to around 100 men. When I returned in 2005, there were perhaps only 30 or 40. I wonder if you remember the artist Antonio Blanco. He lived in a house just across the bridge on the left side amost opposite the Tjampuhan Hotel. I paid a visit to his studio one day and was slighty surprised to see that all his female helpers were naked to the waist. But they were all very beautiful. Directly across that little river was Murni's Warung where I would go to eat quite frequently. Fresh fruit with honey and her homemade yoghurt was wonderful!

I was very surprised that, for whatever reasons, he did not take part in the film docudrama based on Randy Shilts masterful account of the AIDS crisis, "And The Band Played On". Given his star popularity I am sure he must have been asked. Many gay and non-gay actors willingly participated in the filming and helped to bring the AIDS crisis to more and more people around the world. Alan Alda, Richard Gere, Mathew Modine, Ian McKellen, Lily Tomlin, Phil Colllins, Steve Martin and Anjelica Huston were just some of the 'names' who took part. But no Rchard Chamberlain!

I was hooked as a 17-year old on my first visit to London. The hit show of the day was Lionel Bart's "Oliver" but it was sold out. So I got a ticket for his second show "Blitz". I recall little about the production apart from the enormous stage sets and two huge banks of spotlights all round the front of the Proscenium Arch. Until then, lighting units were basically unseen by audiences. The visual effects were amazing. ALW also came something of a cropper when he was casting the show which followed "Phantom", "Aspects of Love". It's a much smaller musical and I consider it one of his best. Unlike others which followed "Phantom", it had a moderately successful first run. But without a producer as savvy and experienced as Cameron Macintosh, he had started his own production company within his oddly named Really Useful Company (frequently renamed The Really Useless Company!) As with "Sunset", for the opening London production he made a weird decision by putting Roger Moore, the former James Bond, into the cast. Like Dunaway, till then I think his singing had been confined to the shower. After "Aspects" had been in rehearsal for six weeks in the Prince of Wales Theatre, Moore himself realised that he just could not sing! "I was having nightmares of the worst possible kind over this show . . . Once we were in the theatre with an orchestra I knew it would be impossible for me to continue. The only polite way out was to leave while there is still time for them to find someone else". At least he did not have to be paid off! His understudy Kevin Coulson came out of "Chess" to take over.

Since not all are on Facebook, can you kindly provide either a screenshot or simply copy and paste into another post.

I managed to see that production of "Anything Goes" at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in New York before Elaine Page saw it and decided with Tim Rice to take it to London. Patti Lupone was the lead at a time when she really reigned supreme over Broadway. I had dear friends living in New York and often they would arrange Broadway tickets for us all when they knew I would be visiting. That afternoon prior to seeing "Anything Goes", they had taken me to see David Henry Hwang's excellent play "M. Butterfly" with B.D. Wong and John Lithgow. Such a pity that John Lone was badly cast in the movie version. But for me, that was an epic day on Broadway! Re Ms. Lupone, you may recall Lloyd Webber's troubles after casting her as Norma Desmond when Sunset Boulevard opened in London. This was to be his new blockbuster show which backfired quite spectacularly. Given its history as an iconic movie, the show's American premiere was actually in Los Angeles instead of Broadway with Glen Close as Norma. Patti Lupone had already opened in the original London production and her contract stated she also open as Norma once the show got to Broadway. However, the producers did not like Lupone's characterisation (frankly, nor did I!) and fired her from Broadway. This resulted in a legal batle in which Lupone allegedly walked away with $1 million. It was then decided that Glen Close move from LA and open the Broadway season. To replace Close, Lloyd Webber staggered everyone by casting Faye Dunaway, an actor who had never sung anything, anwhere! We can teach her how to sing, was Lloyd Webber's refrain. Even as production rehearsals had started, the ALW team were still saying Dunaway would be great. A day or so later they fired her and closed the LA production. Another legal battle ensued with Dunaway walking away with rather nice compensation! Even though "Sunset" ran on Broadway for two years, the total losses on the US productions was estimated by the New York Times to be $20 million. I did not see Glen Close but heard she was excellent. I believe the best Norma was the American Betty Buckley.

It's getting harder for reasonable people outside the USA to have any other than aggressive feelings against the recently elected President. Near Thailand, the cutting the USAID budget has affected hundreds of Myanmar reporters camped out on the border with Thailand on whom the world has depended for months if not years for news of what has been happening re the ghastly civil war in that country. USAID paid their salaries. This started weeks before the present earthquake. Now no more. Worse, The Guardian today has informed us that Trump and his cohorts have made "Sweeping HIV Research and Grant Cuts." This will "decimate" progress on elimiating the pandemic. Let's not forget that in his State of the Union address in 2019, Trump said his actions would eliminate HIV in 10 years -. “Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once-distant dream within reach,” said Trump in his address. “Together we will defeat Aids in America.” We all know the man is a liar, a cheat, a misogynist, a narcissist wth a foul mouth and a pussy grabber. Now he adds the dubious distinction of being the man who is likely to increase the prevalence of HIV, at the least in his own country. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/31/trump-administration-hiv-research-grant-cuts

Senior care, as opposed to medical tourism, requires long term visas. Nothing so far leads me to believe that the Thai government is doing anything that would make this any Baht less than the present retirement visas. I have an Australian friend with whom I used to work for several years who has been suffering from Alzheimers since early 2019. It's desperately sad that he no longer has any memory at all but he and his partner live in Chiang Mai. Their combined income is under the Bt. 65,000 per month each. I do not want to intrude on their privacy by asking how they get round the retirement visa regulations. Certainly they could not take the 800K route nor the Thailand Elite/Privilege. Given that senior care for most involves two people, it is wholly unrealistic to expect all to tall under the present financial guidelines. That's certainly true for most in the older generation from the UK and some parts of Europe. Rather than first announce an intention to go after the senior care market, it would have helped if the government had announced how they would make this financially possible visa-wise. But then expecting the Thai government to be logical is a perfect example of the illogic.