xylophone

Same here after 10 years. Rarely used of late so no big deal for me.

I have tried Express VPN and Cyberghost VPN, and one other, the name of which I can't remember at the moment, and none of them were completely "up to scratch" with "dropouts" and "stuttering" (sorry about the terminology) as well as actually being unable to get through to the protected websites I wanted, BBC iPlayer being the main one. So on a friend's recommendation I switched to Nord VPN and I've been absolutely delighted with it for the past six months, and I'm able to watch BBC iPlayer material, as well as international rugby matches on an Australian sports channel. So I can highly recommend it.

Don't give up your day job ????.

You said, "Conflating two separate issues", and I will reply that they have a common thread linking them which is plain for all right minded people to see, but not of course for the orange man/MAGA supporters.

I'm still watching the other Vietnam war series I mentioned, made in 2017, and it makes for riveting viewing, and McNamara was as guilty as anyone, in the early stages, of being just as stupid as the rest of the military hierarchy, Westmorland included. It does mention that McNamara ran some numbers and they seemed to show that the war was unwinnable, but we know how that panned out.............

TIT, so there is always another one in the graft queue with his hand out.

Promise that you won't cry when you see the actual footage of the idiot breaking into the house, or indeed try to rearrange the narrative to suit the twisted ideals of the MAGA sympathisers on here – – promise?? And then when he is jailed for his crimes, perhaps you will want to send him some letters of MAGA comfort!! Lock him up, there are enough idiots running loose in the US without letting another one go free.

It's a long time since I heard that saying, and it was a favourite of a now deceased friend of mine, especially when referring to someone's hairstyle, saying that it "looks like an explosion in a mattress factory".

You may have already bought one, so this post might be a bit late for you, however I had bought a top-quality Sealy mattress about a year ago and I've never been completely satisfied with it because it's a bit too firm for my liking, although I did try them out at the showroom. So I bought a latex topper thinking that would help, and it didn't really do the job I wanted it to and I was feeling pain on the "pressure points" of my hips and shoulders, and as I wasn't getting much sleep I had to do something, so I went along to "Baan & Beyond" and tried out a few more mattresses and I did a bit more research and apparently the small coil spring mattresses are good for alleviating pressure point problems, so I bought one!! It is softer than I would normally have settled on, but then again at my age, I think I probably need it. It wasn't expensive and with the discount it came to about 9500 baht, and I've had it for about a week now and it's been great and I'm finally getting a decent night's sleep. Although my other mattress cost me about 28,000 baht and is like brand-new, I donated it to the owner of the apartments I stay in and they will use it for another one of their rooms.

Ah, the Ed Wood "joke" that became a cult classic!

Didn't anyone tell the locals that there was a Hollywood movie production about extraterrestrials going on nearby??????

When I looked at the road that had fallen away, plus what remained prior to the slip and after it, I wondered why someone hadn't thought of building an overpass from the part of the road which is still safe, to join up with the road at the bottom of the hill? True enough there is some jungle to cut down, but being able to put in columns that support a road, then making it the same size as a dual carriageway would certainly save any problems with future slips??

About 10 years ago I needed some space and time to reflect upon the past and the future, having made a major move from NZ to Patong, living with a lovely Thai lady for almost 6 years and then breaking up (don't ask, because I don't know why!). So I went to Rarotonga (Cook Islands), to spend a couple of weeks in a friends bungalow, not knowing what I would do or exactly how it would pan out, but I soon settled into it and took long walks along the pristine beaches and crystal clear sea, found a few books to read and also looked up a couple of old friends from my NZ days, and much to my amazement I managed to RELAX, something I have found hard to do over most of my life. It is a beautiful small island, with good-natured people and it's easy to just lose yourself in tranquillity, or whatever you want to do, and it certainly helped me to "clear my head" as the saying goes.

Thanks, I might have to get onto that shortly. However in respect of my previous post regarding the Vietnam war documentary, I have now gotten to the fourth episode and something has really stood out for me – – and in saying this I do not want to denigrate or cast aspersions on the 58,000 Americans who died in that war, because they were doing it for their country (or so they were told) and even now many are still suffering – – and my point is that the Americans had absolutely no idea of how to deal with the Vietnamese situation, no understanding of the culture, and no real strategy, apart from throwing more men and armaments at it. And this became evident when you listened to the recordings of the likes of LBJ and others, because they didn't want to be there, but they didn't know how to extricate themselves "successfully". They had no idea that if you wiped out a local village because it was suspected of harbouring Vietcong or the like, killing some of the men women and children and destroying their crops and food, that they wouldn't become your friends, and this whole point was spoken time and time again by various persons interviewed, most of them being ex-American soldiers, with a few Vietnamese thrown in. The men and women of the destroyed villages became the enemies of the Americans and indeed the Americans were likened to the French as "invaders", rather than friends who would help them in their time of need. Furthermore because so many of the villages became "enemies" they were able to keep secret the Vietcong forays into South Vietnam and also into the areas in which they could destroy American helicopters and troops. I won't go on, however if you throw into the mix; blind ignorance, corruption and no real idea as to what they were doing there, then it's not surprising the whole lot turned to custard, and were lessons learned?? Not a chance, because a similar thing has happened in Afghanistan and I will quote from another documentary on it, "that the Americans had no idea of the culture with which they were dealing, had no idea who was whom in the hierarchy and how it was interlaced, and turned a blind eye to corruption and the hundreds of millions of dollars which were spirited away by the leader at the time – – some of it sound familiar? I mentioned similar about the doco, "Bitter Lake" which is an excellent doco.

You could add a few more folk from African countries who "visit" here, and I have encountered them, and I have nothing good to say about them. I often ask myself why they are here – – the sun? (No plenty in Africa), the sea? (many African countries surrounded by sea, and anyway if they don't like that, then there are other countries much closer, bordering sea), the nightlife? (Plenty in Lagos, Accra,etc). So I can't think of a good reason they are here unless they are looking for opportunities of the unlawful type. Then of course there was the Ugandan streetwalker in Pattaya who made off with a few thousand baht from an English guy who decided to take her back to his room – – silly boy. I worked in Nigeria for over a year and stayed in Ghana (as well as Libya for 15 months) and decided to take a holiday in Malta a few years later, and sitting on the bus in front of me were a couple of Nigerians, and one of them turned round to me and asked me where I was from, so I told him, and he asked me if I had ever been to Nigeria because it was a beautiful country, and I couldn't lie so I told him, "I had been to Nigeria and it was a <deleted> hole in my opinion! No more discourse followed that short exchange. Me, racist? No, just telling it like it is.

Trump and his MAGA followers have often said that they like the "poorly educated" folk in the USA, probably because they readily buy into his nonsense tweets/posts/rantings and lies, so it's not surprising this sort of thing happens because there is no shortage of brainless bogans in that country.

https://www.history.com/news/the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-50-years-ago Some Excerpts from the above to consider: South Vietnam “was essentially the creation of the United States,” the Defense Department would later admit in the Pentagon Papers. It also sent over more and more military advisors, some of whom participated in raids despite ostensibly being there only for self-defense. As part of one such covert operation, the United States trained and directed South Vietnamese sailors to bombard radar stations, bridges and other targets along the North Vietnamese coast. Meanwhile, U.S. warships such as the Maddox conducted electronic espionage missions in order to relay intelligence to South Vietnam. At this point, U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained largely in the background. But in the pre-dawn hours of July 31, 1964, U.S.-backed patrol boats shelled two North Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Tonkin, after which the Maddox headed to the area. Read more from the link above; and especially the paragraphs regarding the lies from the Johnson administration as it never disclosed that the US backed raids were taking place, and a second attack almost certainly never occurred, and later on the Navy issued a statement saying, "it is now clear that North Vietnamese naval forces did not attack Maddox and Turner Joy that night! So I will continue to watch the series, as so far as can be ascertained, what is being portrayed appears to be true.

The traffic on the rest of the island can be a bit of a nightmare, but of course it depends upon which time of day you choose to travel – – for example I had to take my Swift into the Suzuki dealer in Phuket town (I live in Patong) for a service, so I had to go the long way round via Chalong roundabout and then head north, and the traffic was fairly free-flowing (thankfully). After the service and a few visits to a couple of shops, I headed back south to Chalong and then onto Patong and again the traffic was flowing well. As the old saying goes – – timing is of the essence!

And there are "mental midgets" out there who will believe this nonsense, and talking of madness, I have a friend back in NZ who follows a mate of hers who is just as dumb, and has been talking about the world being pushed towards a "grand plan", masterminded by Bill Gates, BlackRock etc. ... No matter, because I told her to stop emailing me with any of her nonsense/rubbish, simply because folks like her are just too dumb, and some. Sorry it's off topic a little although it is related to the title regarding "a madness has taken hold"...........

I think it was mentioned on this thread a while ago, "The Vietnam War – déjà vu" which was the first episode of the series of 10 episodes of a documentary made in 2017. So I watched that and managed to find the rest of the series on 1337x.to and have just downloaded them to watch later, mainly because the first episode was so full of information of which I had no knowledge whatsoever, so watching the rest is an absolute must IMO.

Don't let the fact that he was married fool you – – he was as camp as a row of frilly pink tents!

I remember being served quail as an entrée in a rather posh restaurant many years ago and wondered if it had even been worth killing the bird for the small amount of meat which was on it! Now many decades later I have found cooked quail eggs here in the supermarket and very much like them as a bit of a snack!

Thought I would watch an old movie on iPlayer, called "Wilde" about Oscar Wilde and a part of his life before he went to jail, however I switched it off after a while as I couldn't watch the male to male sex scenes and it wasn't just with one male lover, but with many and also with rent boys – – he was eventually jailed for his activities with boys and men and died a broken man after his two-year jail term. Not my cup of tea I'm afraid.

Problem is Olmate, that with the Aussie pension and the exchange rate to baht, many of the poor buggers don't have much of a choice! Having said that, there were some "reasonable" cask/box wines available here at one time, only to be replaced by the Montclair and similar rubbish – – never my scene, but had occasionally tasted the "reasonable" Aussie cask wines when dining out here. Not brilliant but certainly better than the Montclair rubbish.

Yep but could never take to it (and I am not an Aussie!), and the Montclair fruit wine stuff here is grim IMO.