PeterRS

Thank you @daydreamer for reminding us all of the evil and slaughter of the Japanese occupation. And it was not only in Korea, but we tend to know much less about that invasion and occupation of the Korean Peninsula. Two other vital issues we often forget about Korea during WWII. First, Japan realised it did not have sufficient forces to fight on all the war fronts it had opened. So it recruited Koreans. By the end of the war, 5,400,000 Koreans worked for the Japanese war effort. Of these around 650,000 opted to remain in Japan after the war rather than return home to Korea. The second concerns an agreement made between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. This ensured that once the war in Europe was over and the Nazi armies thoroughly defeated, attention would turn to Asia. Korea posed a huge problem as there were more than 850,000 Japanese living in and administering country. These would have to be vetted for war crimes and the vast majority repatriated. Aware of the massive repatriation task, this had two immediate consequences. First Russia agreed to declare war on Japan. Second, the US and Russia agreed that they would divide repatriation between them. Russia would take the northern part of the country and the USA the lower, the split being at the 38th parallel. Once the administrative offices had been put in place, of course, America and Russia - allies during the war - became sworn enemies. The failure to put just one country in charge of repatriation then became obvious, and we all know the disaster which has resulted in formation of the two Koreas. What I find extraordinary is that we know by the time of the Yata Conference, although the west needed the Russians to continue fighting Hitler form the east, neither Roosevelt nor Churchill trusted Stalin. By 1949, the Americans had left and put in place a pro-American government in the south run by a reviled strongman Syngman Rhee. The Russians removed their forces from the north but not their influence and Kim Il-sung became its strongman. Perhaps ironically the part of Asia which had been most infuenced by Christianity was the Korean Peninsula. Kim Il-sung's material grandfather had been a Protetant minister and it has been alleged that his grandson played the organ in his Church. But like many Koreans Kim was a nationalist whose objective was to get the hated Japanese out of the country. Partisan battles erupted with the Japanese. After one in 1937 the 25-year old Kim fled first to Japanese Manchuria and then to Russia after which he was put on a Japanese 'wanted' list. Many Koreans ended up in Russia where they were able to escape from the hunger, fatigue and danger of fighting in the Peninsula. Kim's first son was born there and named Yuri Irsenovich Kim, later to be known to the world as Kim Jong-il. The Koreans in Russia were then incorporated into the Russia's 88th Special Rifle Brigade. The Russians thereafter persuaded Kim to be their liaison between Pyongyang and the Russian army. We all know what then happened with the Korean War: its slaughter of millions, the closure of North Korea and in later years the nuclear stand-off. We all conveniently forget that the very fact of partition of the Peninsula was due as much to the west in the form of America and the UK as to Russia.

Obviousy should read Modern Manners by P. J. O'Rourke prior to departure. Description.: “Modern Manners is O’Rourke doing what he has always done: making hilarious, insightful, often vicious fun of the world and all its inhabitants,” raves People magazine. In this “Etiquette Book for Rude People,” the man that Wall Street Journal dubbed “the funniest writer in America” sets his sites on the world of etiquette and guides us through the “art of incivility,” providing a “rulebook for living in a world without rules.” While the anti-etiquette outlined within may not be ideal for every situation, it’s a fine way to pass the time, distinguish yourself from the crowd, or at least have a lot of fun trying.

Good airline. This January review of the SYD to BKK business class may interest you. Check with the airline if you realy have to enter China to pick up ad recheck in your bag before the Bangkok sector. And do you therefore need a visa? "On checkin was advised that bags could only be sent as far as Haikou. At that point I would have to enter China, collect baggage then checkin for BKK flight. And that's despite both flights being on a single ticket. Upon arrival then had issues at passport control. They wanted evidence of my 2nd flight. The print out I had on me simply said SYD / BKK. And had no wifi access. Eventually was allowed in. The flights themselves were great. Relatively modern planes with attentive flight attendants. 1-2-1 in business on the A330 and 2-2 on the 737. Western food options on the way over. Very much Chinese on the way back. For the price I paid it was a great option but 15-17hrs to BKK instead of 9 hours might turn others off." https://www.airlinequality.com/airline-reviews/hainan-airlines

Sorry no spare room, But there is a small balcony for your morning coffee. Just bring some Nespresso capsules with you. The new Cafe Florian ones look really nice!

Could he even be one of the go-go boys? Seriously, with Bangkok 1 open and the new development on the corner of Silom/Convent with @vinapu's second favourite Michelin 7-star restaurant also open, I really wonder if there is sufficient demand for yet more malls, offices, even apartments in that area. In any case, if the land has been up for sale for several months, I imagine potential developers will surely need to get some form of advance planning permission for an acquisition in that area before concluding a deal and putting money down. Can you imagine the blockage on Silom with an endless procession of cement and other construction trucks?

You must be drunk! You already started a thread on this very subject.

It has long ago lost its meaning for most, which is more than sad. August 15 marks the formal end of the war in the Pacific. This was the day when the Japanese Emperor spoke to his nation for the first time. I think most of us can remember his talking about how the Japanese people would henceforth have to "endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable." What we forget is that that speech was laden with what today we would call "spin". The declaration of war, proclaimed Hirohito, was "to ensure Japan's self preservation and the stabilisation of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandisement." Given that Japan had been taking over chunks of China since 1931 and that it then took over a host of countries in Asia, the "infrigement of sovereignty" was clearly a lie. He then ended that short speech with another lie. "We canot but express our deepest regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire toward the emancipation of East Asia." "Cooperated with" is aother lie. He talks of four years of war but it was in fact 15 years of war starting in China, the setbacks of the Japanese people and its military forces. Nothing about those slaughtered by Japanese forces. And successive Japanese governments still revere their convicted war dead with annual visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine. I have a deep love for Japan as a country and the many Japanese I have met and worked with over decades. But I abhor how that nation is still unable to offer an unequivocal apology for its wartime atrocities. It merely dithers with words like "sorry" and "it must never happen again". It is, I know, part of Japanese culture to be less than clear in many official statements. But the countries of Asia are still awaiting an outright apology for close to 50 million deaths its actions resulted in. Some right-wing Japanese still deny that war crimes were ever committed. Arguably the worst of all was the horrendous 1937 Nanjing massacre when Japanese triops murdered 300,000 mostly civilians, an action where babies were torn from their mothers' arms and dashed to the ground and so many tens of thousands of Chinese rounded up and beheaded. One who is not prepared to forget the atrocities in China is President Xi Jinping. August and September will see a host of commemorations including a Parade in Tiananmen Square. Already a video Dead to Rights on the Nanjing massacre has gone viral and a new movie about the lethal medical experiments conducted on Chinese after the invasion of Marchuria opens next month. None will be seen in Japan. South Korea also marks August 15 as gwangbokjeol which translates to the "return of the light." As Professor Gi-wook Shin of Stanford University points out in a BBC article, collective Japan's basic problem is that in viewing the Pacific War it does so considering it was the victim. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp89ed9j5ygo

That rather aptly describes half a dozen or more posters here, many of them writing gossamer thin one liners with just a handful of words! And some posters just like to criticise other much more regular posters on a variety of topics even though they themselves may have made less than 150 posts over 14 years of membership!

Looking through a list the other day, I was pleasantly reminded of David Henry Hwang's fascinating play based on real life subjects, M. Butterly. Friends took me to see it on Broadway all the way back in 1988 with John Lithgow and B.D. Wong in the cast. I always wondered why any actor would choose to be known by his initials rather than his full name - until I saw the play, that is. The extraordinary thing is that the play is based on the real life story of a married French civil servant René Gallimard who is posted to Beijing in the early 1960s when his wife has to stay in France. Fascinated by Beijing Opera, he finds himself falling in love with a Chinese Opera singer, Song Liling, playing a role similar to that of Puccini's Madama Butterly. Soon they start a romance that is to last for 20 years. Clearly something of an ingénue at the outset, Gallimard seems unaware that female roles in Beijing Opera are always played by men. But does he remain totally unaware that he is in fact being played by the Chinese government, when as he must he realises his lover is in fact a man? Was he in fact a homosexual desperately trying to play this down? David Henry Hwang stated in an interview – "The lines between gay and straight become very blurred in this play, but I think he knows he's having an affair with a man. Therefore, on some level he is gay.” When the truth is finally revealed, Gallimard is found guilty of treason and jailed. He claims that he was in love with the character Butterfly, not the actor. In jail, he has kept Song's kimono and wig. He dons them before killing himself, an echo of Puccini's opera, parts of which are played throughout the play. A few years later the play was made into a movie with Jeremy Irons and John Lone. B.D. Wong was wonderfully believable on stage. On film John Lone is wooden and remarkably boring as Song. While the play's first run had 777 performances on Broadway, not surprisingly the movie was a complete bomb at the box office.

Another nonsense post! No one even in the UK believes the garbage frequently printed in The Sun newspaper. Not only is that article more than 7 years old, it points out at the end that eating rat is banned in China. And your "news" about cats just took a dive given that the AFP article you posted to back up your preposterous claims is 10 years old! Again it states that the eating of cats is banned! Clearly you know you have disrupted the thread with garbage which can not be backed up since you end your stupid series of posts "let us return to the actual topic at hand." Who derailed it?

That may just be why the flight price is higher, as you stated in another forum. There are about 5 fare classes in business class. Generally I find that nearer the fight date, especially in business class, fares are higher because all the cheaper fares have been sold.

Last March my usual Qatar ticket to the UK was up by an even greater percentage. As reported elsewhere, I took a much longer routing via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific for a considerably cheaper fare. Thankfully only a 2 1/2-hour layover. Yet in recent weeks I have had several emails from both Qatar and Emirates offering even cheaper fares to several cities in Europe valid through to next summer.

I can see you were waiting watch in hand for the rain to start. Or did you set the alarm just to make sure it was on time LOL

A ridicuous comment! As @khaolakguy is well aware having earlier criticised my posting of travel photos, I travel probably more than most. If I am travelling on my own I take a taxi. When a client has engaged me they provide an Airport limousine. But then this is not the first time @khaolakguy has been wrong in his assumptions re others' postings!

That is B/S. How come for the last 2 years I have had BMW's from the Airport Limousine Service? Never a Merc!

Thank you. I am sure that helps for those who do not live in the UK. Mind you, I have never placed any faith in the BBC's website weather service. I was once in Taipei during September. The BBC claimed the weather in Taipei was warm and sunny. Sitting at my hotel desk, I could see outside a major typhoon under way with tree branches and shop signs flying around amid very high winds and torrential rain! The following day i went to the hot springs near Beitou. All were cl.osed as the typhoon had ripped up all the water pipes!

It is not a Mercedes. It is a BMW. But then your facts are often suspect.

I usually get a taxi. At some times of day it is a reasonably fast and painless operation. If it is a peak time, though, you can wait in long slow moving queues in the heat and humidity for a good 15 minutes or more. The ticket machines only give out tickets when a taxi is about to arrive at its position. Quite often I have found the reason for delays is not just the large volume of passengers, it is the scarcety of taxis. Non peak times should be a breeze.

Who?

I would like to have read this, but I am not on Facebook and for a variety of reasons will not join. Not all readers are on social media. Also, The Times is behind a paywall. WIth all respect - and very many thanks for mentioning this - I do wish those who post articles would insert a link that can be read by others without trawling through the web. Something like these 2 which I found today - https://www.danielmendelsohn.com/book/the-odyssey

From my travels around Asia, I reckon that is a very accurate assessment.

Just take the official airport limousine service - website below. You can not book but they have a lot of cars, mostly higher end models. Details of pricing are on the site and should not be more than Bt. 1,200. https://www.aotlimousine.com

The usual dose of daily nonsense.

Hurricanes hardly ever hit Europe. In the US they are mostly driven in from the Atlantic and so it is those states and Caribbean Islands that suffer. But in the USA wildfires are mostly affecting the west. Again hurricanes rarely ever hit the west and Pacific Northwest. Praying for more rain may help in dousing some fires. But global warming is resulting in it falling much more heavily resulting in severe fooding. All this is going to get much worse until world leaders do their jobs and get to grips with global warming.

32 or so years ago when the Narita Express started, I was in the bowels of Tokyo station awaiting its arrival. Being the first day of operation, there were little red carpets where the doors would stop and a bevy of smiling dolly birds ready to help passengers. With the ticket all in Japanese, at that time I had no idea how to interpret the information. Thinking I was in car 6, I showed it to the vivacious girl. "Hai", she said, indicating I wait by that door. When the train arrived I tried to find my seat. Someone was stting in it. Kindly he explained that I was not in seat 1 in Car 6 but in seat 6 in car 1. Knowing the train stopped only for maximum two minutes, I got out, shouted something at the girl and raced down the length of the train. As I reached car 2, the doors closed, the girls bowed and off went the train. I was furious. The only way I could get to Narita on time was a taxi. That cost around ¥26,000 or $200. Today it would be considerably more. On my return to my office a few days later, I wrote a letter to Japan Railways explaining what had happened and enclosing copies of receipts. I assumed that was that. Lesson learned - know how to read train tickets! Imagine my surprise when about four months later my secretary told me there was someone to see me. It turned out to be a man from JR in his hideous green uniform. After some explanation and apologies which my secretary translated, he handed me over an envelope with cash. It was all the expenses I had incurred after missing the Narita Expres, including the taxi fare! I thought - only in Japan!