PeterRS

Happened to me once when I was visiting my old haunt in Hong Kong for business. I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express quite close to my office, not a hotel I had used before. One morning i felt the need for company and so checked the apps. There was nothing special to interest me, although one reasonable looking guy persisted. So I told him roughly the area I was in and asked where he was. "About 10 minutes away" was the reply. Of course i should have asked for a more precise location but sex was on my mind. Wnen I did not hear from him for 20 minutes, I called. Now he was only 5 minutes away. So I said I would go down to the lobby and wait for him as lift cards were required to get upstairs. 20 minutes later I was checking the street in both directions. Back at the lift after accepting the morning had been wasted, I heard a voice. "Here I am. So sorry I am late." There before me was a guy who was not as good-looking as his pic and no doubt a few years older. Like @joizy, I should just have given him his subway fare and said goodbye. But . . . Never sure of anyone coming directly to my hotel, all my cash and valuables were in the safe apart from HK$150 (about US$20) which I had left in the back pocket of my jeans in case this guy had wandering fingers. Cash had never been mentioned but I always offer transport money. After showers, we got down to business. Within a few moments he hasked if he could take pics of our encounter, but only from below my waist. Of course i should have said no, the more so as I was not really enjoying this encounter. Why I said "OK" I now cannot recall. But it was all over in a few minutes and I was very pleased this guy would soon be far away. Instead of showering together, he said I should go first. When he then showered, I checked my jeans pocket. The money was gone - hardly surprising. Once dressed, he said he wanted "his" fee. I told him he had already stolen HK$150 from my jeans and he was not getting another cent as cash had never been mentioned. He quickly became difficult and asked me to open the safe. Not in 100 years, I told him, adding that if he did not leave with the money which would have more than covered his transport, I would call the hotel security. Still he would not move. I was not prepared to try and fight to get the guy out of my room and so I did as I said: I called security that there was a thief in my room. After about 30 seconds, he did finally leave. But I was not going to let him keep those photos. At the lift, the security guard appeared. I am certain he guessed what had been happening within a nano-second but he was very professional. When I told him about the photos, he insisted the guy show him his phone. It was then I realised he had hundreds of photos on it. The security guard asked which were my photos, had them deleted and then let the guy go down in the lift. I tipped the guard and thanked him profusely. There had been so many red flags I shocked myself that I had not been warned by them. Thinking later about the episode, I wondered where he could have come from. There are not many money boys in Hong Kong in the daytime. Besides Hong Kong public transport was excellent and you get anywhere within about 30 minutes unless coming from close to the border with mainland China. And then it twigged. I think he had to have come from Shenzhen across the border with China where I knew there were quite a number of money boys. A subway from Shenzhen would only have taken around 30 minutes for someone also holding a Hong Kong ID card. But it was virtually all my fault and I learned from it. I did write to the management of Holiday Inn Express in Hong Kong warning about a thief, informing them that he had been ejected from the one i had stayed at and even giving them his photo. Remarkably, on one of my regular visits to Hong Kong two years later, this thief contact me again. He had clearly forgotten the incident. I just texted him that if he showed his face anywhere in my presence, the police would be called. He never did! I realise some will say i was stupid and that this guy could have been carrying a knife of some other weapon. But he did not have any carry bag and I could see there was no knife or gun. Still, had be put up a fight, I could have been injured in some way. I learned my lesson.

Trousers without pockets, on the other hand, would be a definite 'no-no' for me. Otherwise, how could enquiring hands easily find their way down to give you the 'rise' you seek in a bar??

It's a very fine play which I saw in London with Peter Firth (indeed very attractive) as the 17-year old boy and Alec McCowan as the psychiatrist. When it transferred to Broadway, McCowan was replaced by Anthony Hopkins and later Richard Burton. In its most recent production, 'Harry Potter' (Daniel Radcliffe) played the boy in both London and Broadway and insisted on stripping to the buff. But when playing the part, those playing it always had their bare backs to the audience. (I'll bet there were a goodly number of binoculars in the audience!) I have to correct one possible misinterpretation, though, given the nature of thread. As @Keithambrose points out, the pstchiatrist discovers the boy has a deep attraction to horses (in the play they were not real horses). He works in a stable and frequently takes one out for riding at night, often when he is naked. Any form of mild sexual attraction is limited to feeling their coats, muscular bodies and the smell of their sweat. He visits the psychiatrist because he has blinded a number of horses. In their sessions, the psychiatrist realises that the boy comes from a very mixed religious family. His deeply religious mother's teachings about the violent aspects in the Bible have turned into a fascination with horses. In one part of the play, a girl attempts to seduce him but he cannot get an erection after he hears horses in the barn underneath. He then blinds the six horses as they have "seen" into his soul. The DVD cover of the movie (when real horses were used)

As I do frequently to some members' understandable annoyance! Franky I do not think the government clampdowns had much effect by 2012/13. They hit hard at the start of the first Thaksin government with his homophobic religious Interior Minister. But that was more than a decade earlier. I think I am right in saying that it was even around the time of the clampdown that Krazy Dragon opened. At first I really liked that bar. It was refreshing to have the boys dance on the high tables with their assets dangling in front. And then a couple or so years later it seemed to have changed - or at least the boys had. I thought they were a rougher and less obliging bunch, even with the tips. The mamasan also seemed not to encourage as much rotation. Too many of the boys just hung around at the back of the bar chatting and smoking (cigarettes, that is!). Tea money may have been an issue with Happy Boys. On my few visits, it never saw more than a handful of customers and the bar area itself was one of the smallest in that area I seem to recall. What made it different, I thought, was that the boys always seemed to have fun and made sure it was fun for the customers. My shirts never had pockets. Only Ts or Polo-type shirts!

Donald Trump can think what he wants, but if he has it in his mind that he's in the running for a Nobel Peace Prize, he's even more out of his mind than we thought. The Prize has not been given to actual peace makers since 1994 when Itzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat shared it. Since then it has more generally been awarded to activist organisations like the Campaign to Ban Land Mines, Medecines Sans Frontiers, the International Atomic Energy Commission and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. But when we look more closely, right in their midst can be found Al Gore for his fight on Climate Change, Jimmy Carter and Trump's evil pal Barack Obama. The presence of these three must quite literally infuriate him. But then wIth his negative stance on climate change, alone, he is screwed!

Verbal duelling sometimes including lies had been part and parcel of British parliamentary life since the 17th century. As time progressed, personal insults where parliamentarians criticised fellow members using certain words and phrases, especially those including some degree of jocularity, were accepted. Only when an untruth was alleged and challenged, could the Speaker intervene and eject him from of the chamber. If proven untrue, the member was expected to resign. I assume much the same is true today. However, even lies cannot be taken to law since if spoken in the House as MPs are covered by Parliamentary Privilege. On the other hand, if an MP lies about and slanders those whom they accuse of some crime or abuse of the system outsde the House, they can be prosecuted in court. The media used to be very sensitive about parliamentary reporting such acts, but much less so today. This continues even though to the outside observer the House of Commons can sometimes appear like a bear pit, especially during Prime Minister's Question Time when, unlike in the US Houses of Congress, prepared speeches are far less usual. This all brings up a key question of: when is a lie a lie? The fact is whether we like it or not deception in public life is rife. So how would you solve it? The fact is that declining trust in politics and politicians is directly linked to failures of integrity and a perceived lack of accountability. Strengthening accountability systems, improving the transparency of how decisions are made, and how politicians are held to account could be an important response to this. But surely that is never going to happen. There are so many examples it is hard to pick just one or two. Did Clinton lie when he said he "never had sexual relations with that woman"? Although seemingly obvious, you can actually argue that two ways! Recently a British MP Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, said she had never accepted free clothes from a donor. "I haven't and I wouldn't." When it was proved that she had received such a loan from a luxury clothing brand, she merely gave it back to the donor so that it, too, then became a loan. How do we define words and their precise meanings? @jimmie50 mentioned the McCarthy hearings which has appeared in a number of threads recently. And as also mentioned we have to remember that one of the legal counsels at some of those hearings was the frightful - and frightening - closet gay Roy Cohn. He became the chief mentor to Donald Trump. Almost everything Trump now does comes directly from the Cohn playbook!

Never heard of it! Besides, I think this thread is going a bit too far off the subject when dealing with cases involving murders. It's a drugs bust. Apologies for my earlier comment that the death penalty is always commuted to life imprisonment in Thailand. That is not accurate. The last execution took place in 2018 of a Thai, a known gang member who had murdered a teenager, and there are quite a few on 'death row', a large percentage for drug offences. I have no access to statistics, but I can find no facts about foreigners being executed in recent decades. An Australian Nola Blake was arrested in 1987 for drug trafficking (for which she had been paid US$49,000) and given a death sentence, later commuted to life in prison. No westerner had faced death in the preceding decades. After 11 years in jail, Blake received a Royal Pardon.

There can of course be a multitude of reasons and we may never know unless the young man gives a reliable confession. Given the BIB habit of wringing less than reliable confessions out of alleged criminals, perhaps even then we will not know. But the obvious question marks surely have to be why stay in Thailand in a good hotel for two whole weeks before becoming involved in drugs? If drugs were his objective, he could have arranged a deal and tried to skip the country much more quickly. Secondly, why just 20,000 baht to ship almost 9 kgs of the drug? For that huge amount of the drug, he could have been offered a great deal more and accepted. Then which account is correct? Was he simply planning to distribute to another party in Thailand, as one news account claimed? Or was he intending to try and export it? And on this point, why use a pink suitcase? As a regular traveller, I have rarely seen that colour on the carousels, mostly black or another dark colour and therefore virtually anonymous. There seem to be no news updates on the internet since 4 days ago. If we hear no more, perhaps we might assume that Daddy has paid the BIB a mega ransom and the case has just vanished.

Mossman's death was obviously tragic. I cannot help comparing his suicide note with that of Hong Kong's mega-star Leslie Cheung. Hugely talented as an actor and singer with two fabulous movies to his credit Farewell My Concubine and Happy Together, very few were aware that he was suffereing from chronic depression. He committed suicide at almost the same age as Mossman - he was 46 - and wrote just before jumping to his death from the top of Hong Kong's Mandarin Hotel a very similar note - “I can’t stand it anymore . . . In my life I have done nothing bad. Why does it have to be like this?”

I mentioned in my post that Robin Day had come over to the BBC from ITV. As you say, although it took a while, he became a much more probing interviewer. That said, I think Mossman's character would not have worked in the role. He was a marvellous foreign correspondent but I think unsuited to regular studio work. And that had nothing to do with his being gay.

I will test one set as I am not sure if the negatives have also been affected over time.

I also enoy your report. A few years ago in Bangkok I chatted on one of the apps with a beautiful young Chinese guy who was here on holiday with his family. They happened to have relocated to Reggio Calabria and he was desperate to meet up with a considerably older westerner here. Sadly our timetables just did not coincide. We continued to chat over the next year. I have a friend I have known for decades who lives in Piacenza. He had met his partner in a gay bar in Milan two decades ago. I was thinking of perhaps visiting him and renewing my acquantaince with that part of Italy, after which I would make the long detour down to Reggio Calabria. But in the end i decided too much time had passed and it would just take too much time out of the trip. Sadly! I did however meet my friend. I flew into Bologna and took in Parma and the lovely little nearby town of Pistoia. WIth little time on my hands, I did not even check the apps. I know in Bologna there are several gay bars and lots of students around. It's also a beautiful city. But for gay life Milan will be much more interesting. Bologna Pistoia

Telephone is now Circus. I loved the old Telephone Bar in its heyday. Then changed a lot though.

Friends and I were discussing this over dinner earlier in the week. In our much younger days, politicians in the UK, especially more senior ones, would be treated with a deference that today would be described as toadyism, the act of flattering and taking answers as fact whether they were or not. The media in the UK treated virtually as fact Prime Minister Harold Wilson's 1967 comment on the devaluation of sterling when he said words to the effect, "There will be no change to the pound in your pocket." It was blatently untrue but he was never drawn on expanding that statement. Nowadays, the media can say almost what they like about polliticians, their programmes and their statements. often braying like a kennel of rabid dogs for a comment. It is then analysed relentlessly for its honesty of more frequently its lies. Can anyone imagine Winston Churchill or Eisenhower being treated in such a fashion? It brought to mind an excellent play I saw at London's National Theatre nearly 20 years ago. The Reporter by Nicholas Wright delved into the life and times of one of British television's finest reporters. Tall, slim, aggressively handsome, James Mossman spent three years working for the BBC's flagshp news and current affairs programme Panorama in the early-1960s. During this time he was assigned to overseas duties and his filmed reports on a variety of wars and conflicts were praised for being balanced and factual. Burned out after continually having to pack bags at the last minute, Mossman asked to be relieved of the overseas duties and brought back into the studio. The BBC mandarins agreed. It was around this time that the revered presenter of Panorama Richard Dimbleby (a figure whom Brits trusted as much as the Americans had Edward R. Murrow in his despatches during WWII) was dying of cancer. Who was to succeed him was a subject of much debate. Mossman was one of the favoured candidates. Until, that is, what was to become an infamous live interview with Harold Wilson. Mossman had been in Vietnam several times and loathed what he was witnessing. For whatever reason, he jumped over the bounds of conventionality and attacked Wilson on the war. I have a copy of the play here. The dialogue starts gently enough but it is lengthy. The main thrust is this - JM: "Do you deplore war?" HW: "Yes I do. I deplore all wars. They're horrible." JM: "The why are we supporting the Americans?" HW: "We oppose the advance of communism wherever it approaches the free world. That's why we have a moral responsibility to support the Americans . . . why we maintain a robust military presence East of Suez." JM: "Though not in Vietnam itself? . . .Do you have any plans to send British troops to Vietnam?" HW: "No, we do not." JM: "But as a show of support, they might be very welcome, isn't that so?" After some more to and fro, Mossman came to the nub of his questioning. JM: " . . . may I suggest that our support for America isn't based on morality at all, but on expedience? You spoke earlier of an economic downturn. Wouldn't that downturn spiral into chaos if the Americans withdrew their support for the British economy? Don't we have to support them whether we like it or not? Why can't you admit that?" HW: "Because it isn't the case." JM: "So your support is based on pure morality?" HW: "Yes it is." JM: "And you expect us to believe that?" At that point, the guest presenter attempted to step in but Mossman had the last word. JM: "But if one is burning to death under a layer of napalm, one's not going to be very happy about being told that's it's all for the sake of free choice and democracy. Where do we stand in relation to the killing? . . .Isn't it morally more appropriate to deplore the killing on the side you claim to have influence? That's if you have any influence? Or else to admit that you're supporting a war that you know to be immoral and foolish out of sheer abject subservience to the United States?" Wilson immediately gave up and stormed out of the studio. From that point on, there was never any chance of Mossman taking over from Dimbleby. The BBC needed the government since it depended financially on a licence from those owning TV sets. Mossman was demoted and eventually - and miserably - took over an arts programme.The new presenter was brought over from the competing ITV channel, Robin Day. Although this post (as usual!) is long, I think it is of interest not merely for the subject matter but for the fact that Mossman was gay at a time when it was still illegal in England. After his professional broadcasting life suffered, for a short time he was happy. He had met a young Canadian and they set up house in the Norfolk countryside. Mossman finally felt that life was important once again. Did he know his Canadian lover was a drug addict? He died of an overdose just two years later. Mossman tried to go on, but for him it was the last straw. He committed suicide in 1971 aged 45. He left a note. "I can't bear it any more, though I don't know what 'it' is." Photo: BBC News

She was probably best-known for playing the snooty, snobbish housewife Hyacinth Bucket (which she ensured would be pronouned "bouquet") who wished she belonged to the upper classes in the BBC hit television series Keeping Up Appearances. But Dame Patrica was much more than a BBC sitcom actor. Indeed she was one of Britain's finest, most versatile and perhaps least known actors. Her Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Savoy Theatre in 2001 being one of her finest and most famous roles. She had performed a wide variety of classic roles and had been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since she took part in few movies, she is sadly less well known across the pond. A trained singer, Dame Patricia took part in many musicals. I saw her in 1993 at the National Theatre in one of her great performances, that of Nettie Fowler in Nicholas Hyntner's stunning production of Carousel which later transferred to Broadway. I doubt if the it song "You'll Never Walk Alone" has ever been sung more gloriously. It brought tears to my eyes. That role has been sung over the years by some of the greatest opera singers including Renee Fleming, Shirley Verrett and Cheryl Studer. Dame Patricia has died aged 96.

Once again not true! The Russians who invaded Paris were made up of several contingents, of which only one was of Cossacks! This from Britannica - By the late 18th century, all Cossack males were required to serve in the Russian army for 20 years, and, although each Cossack village (stanitsa) continued to elect its own assembly, the hetman was appointed by the central government. And cossacks remain as part of the Russian armed forces today. In the 21st century, under Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, Cossacks resumed their historical relationship with Moscow. Cossack auxiliaries bolstered local police forces within Russia, most notably at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, but their use of harsh tactics and enforcement of a conservative moral code sparked concerns among human rights organizations, Cossack paramilitary groups fought alongside Russian troops during the 2008 invasion of Georgia, and they participated in Russia’s armed annexation of the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea in 2014 as well as the subsequent Russian-backed insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

I wonder if anyone recalls roughly when this bar closed. It was located on its own about 50 meters outside Sunee Plaza and so the location was not good as many would not have been aware of it. The boys wore very short toga-like mini-skirt with slits in the sides and were always very friendly. Drinks were not expensive as I recall and it was less openly raunchy than Eros, but designed for fun nonetheless! It also had a mezzanine level where a lot went on! On my infrequent visits to Pattaya I would pop in occasionally but it seemed not to last for very long.

I remember that sauna by the river. A bit to the south of the main city. I think it was named Sparoma. Lovely grass terrace down to the river and nice pool. But I found the remaining facilities rather boring, perhaps because there were very few patrons when I was there. I believe it was aimed at wealthier Thais, few of whom seemed to want to go there. Presumably that was one reason for it lasting only a year or two. Like you I only visited that sauna once as I much preferred The House of Male which usually had quite a number of students from the nearby university. And now House of Male has also died. I had so many good times there over what must been almost 25 years.

Ah! So they could be looking for croissants!

What does that non-sequitor mean? As you will see on any map, there are several countries between the Baltic States and France!

Oscar Winner Dame Julie Andrews was 90 yesterday. Virtually born on the stage, she was taking part in British music hall entertainments before her teens. Encouraged by her step-father to take voice lessons, it was eventually realised that she possessed an extraordinary 4-octave vocal range. By the time she was 20 Broadway had beckoned and she became a star playing Eliza Doolittle in Lerner and Lowe's magnificent musical My Fair Lady. When it came time to make the movie, she was the obvious choice for Eliza - to all but the studio head Jack Warner. He believed the film needed a more obvious star and chose Audrey Hepburn instead, even though she could not sing and Eliza's singing is dubbed throughout the film. But Andrews got her own back. At that year's Golden Globe ceremony, she thanked Warner because it freed her up to take on the lead role in Mary Poppins the part for which she won an Oscar. Soon she would become a worldwide sensation in the movie of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. Following that monster success, though, was less easy. She spent a decade working in television and in a few movies that were essentially flops. But in one she met the man who was to become her husband of 41 years, the director Blake Edwards, best known today perhaps for his association with comedian Peter Sellars in the Pink Panther movies, a particularly happy marriage that was to last till his death in 2010. And it was in a musical comedy directed by her husband that her career rebounded. In Victor/Victoria, she plays a clasically trained singer in 1930s Paris very much down on her luck. A chance meeting with a gay cabaret singer (marvellously played by the late Robert Preston) leads to a major new career as a man singing as a woman. When I first saw this on a Garuda flight from Bali to Hong Kong, I was on the floor collapsed in laughter. Whenever I show it now to young Thai friends, they love it. But it was also a show which all but killed her career. Edwards decided to make it into a stage musical which ran in New York for a respectable 734 performances. But during a four week vacation near the end of the run when Liza Minelli took the role, Andrews felt problems with her vocal chords and eventually pulled out of the show altogether. A small nodule was discovered on one of the chords and her doctor prescribed a long period of rest. Her husband was not satisfied and proposed surgery, a delicate operation that sadly turned out badly. Andrews vocal chords were effectively destroyed as far as singing was concerned. She basically never sang again. They sued the surgeon and won an award of US$20 million. But she turned to writing and since then has written no less than 36 books for children. She also continued acting in speaking parts, as in the sugary Princess Diaries, as well as many voice-overs as in the Shrek series. But surely it is for Maria, Mary Poppins and Victor/Victoria that we remember her most today. For her wonderful contribution to film and the stage, here's wishing Dame Julie belatedly the happiest of birthdays.

She may be 87 but clearly as on the ball as ever. The great actor Jane Fonda has relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment in the wake of Trump's censorship threats. She is following in the footsteps of her father actor Henry Fonda who launched the Committee in the 1940s in response to the House un-American Activities Committee led by the awful Senator Joseph McCarthy. This had accused many entertainment figures of being communist sympathisers, "derailing many careers and casting a chilling effect on Hollywood." His daughter Jane's relaunch has been supported by 550 entertainment figures, many household names. In a statement she said this - “The McCarthy Era ended when Americans from across the political spectrum finally came together and stood up for the principles in the Constitution against the forces of repression. Those forces have returned. And it is our turn to stand together in defense of our constitutional rights . . . Free speech and free expression are the inalienable rights of every American of all backgrounds and political beliefs – no matter how liberal or conservative you may be. The ability to criticize, question, protest, and even mock those in power is foundational to what America has always aspired to be.” In a letter encouraging her peers to join the initiative, Fonda pointed to her long history as a civil rights activist. “I’m 87 years old. I’ve seen war, repression, protest, and backlash. I’ve been celebrated, and I’ve been branded an enemy of the state. “But I can tell you this: this is the most frightening moment of my life,” https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/01/jane-fonda-committee-first-amendment-trump It is surely more than interesting that a counsel on one of McCarthy's hearings was the dreadful closet homosexual Roy Cohn, the man who went on to became Donald Trump's mentor and from whose playbook of dirty tricks Trump not only learned his "craft" but puts it into practice almost daily.

More on the drug bust. Britain's Daily Mail - never a newspaper with the most accurate reporting, to be fair - claims the arrested man, George Wilson, comes from an extremely wealthy family and his father is a multi-millionaire, thanks largely to involvement in the pop music business with artists like Iron Maiden, Elton John and Kenny Rodgers. The father's business is worth "hundreds of millions". Wilson himself went to a boarding school allegedly costing £70,000 a year. The family's home is "luxurious". Wilson is said to have been in Thailand for two weeks. He confirmed the pink bag was his but when asked what was inside, he answered, "I don't know." Contrary to the Khaosod English report, the Daily Mail states he was planning to export the drugs from Thailand and that this was an operation involving a much larger gang of drug smugglers. It is believed the drugs had been made in Myanmar. Penalty in Thailand for carrying this amount of this type of drug is death, always now converted to life in prison. My mind finds this whole affair extremely strange. This young man is clearly far from poor - indeed may be borderline rich. He did not stop in Bangkok for just 2 or 3 days like most drug mules. He had been here for 2 weeks in a soi where the hotels are certainly not cheap. Why would a 23-year old from an extremely wealthy family become involved in what he surely must have realised was some form of drug smuggling exercise merely for payment of 20,000 baht? Most mules are paid a minimum of several thousand US$$. It's all very curious! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15152741/Boarding-school-Thai-drugs-Brit-police-70k.html

Yet another drug mule has been discovered and arrested in Bangkok. A 23-year old man from the UK was discovered to have 9.1kg of crystal meth wrapped up in foil bags to look like tea in his hotel room. According to Khaosod English, the man was staying at a hotel on Sukhumvit 11. The packages were already in his suitcase when police arrived. The authorities had acted on a tip off about a "narcotics handover in a hotel." Allegedly the man had been given the bag to look after by another British man whose name he only knew as "Snoopy". He was to hand the 'tea' over to customers on September 30 and had been paid 20,000 baht. Judging by the number of officers present in the hotel room, the police were well aware that a drug transfer was about to take place. Although it seems there was no intent by the young man to smuggle the drugs out of Thailand, he clearly is yet another innocent individual caught up in drug activity. Yet innocence is relative, and when you agree to carry a bag given to you by someone whose name you do not know but is nicknamed "Snoopy", alarm bells must surely have been ringing. When will these young, often poor people desperate to make a bit of cash realise that anyone caught with drugs in Thailand is more likely than not to end up looking at a lengthy jail term in the Bangkok 'Hilton'? I suspect he had never been to Thailand before and just assumed this was easy money. What a stupid man! https://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/2025/09/30/british-man-caught-with-9kg-of-crystal-meth-in-bangkoks-sukhumvit-hotel/

Because it gets Russia closer to the rest of western Europe - just as Hitler quickly marched through The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg in 1940 because his real goal was France.