>From the Bangkok Post 
Opinion and Analysis page
May 1, 1999

   I can buy a telephone and get a line but I can't have the line in my own name, it must be registered to a Thai. Amazing Thailand.
   I can buy a car and have a driver's license but I can't register the car in my name unless I have a one-year visa, which apparently fends off disasters brought on by a foreigner owning a car here and shorter visas a can't do this. Amazing Thailand.
   In stores such as Makro, I must give way to staff packing shelves and if I don't I will be abused as I have been in the past. Amazing Thailand.
   I get stopped by the police and am told to pay a fine for something I did not do, and as I pay, children without safety helmets ride past on a motorbike and are ignored. Amazing Thailand. 
   People tell me they are encouraged to be nice to foreigners because the foreigners bring in much-needed currency and yet the immigration division will only extend a tourist visa once and then order the tourist out. Amazing Thailand .
   While sitting on a parked motor bike I was knocked down by another motor bike ridden by male children and the bike I was on was extensively damaged and I suffered slight injuries. At first, the police thought it was my fault and said I must pay. When they discovered I was not at fault, they told those on the other bike to go home and they told me to forget it. Amazing Thailand. 
   I have been told that everything that happens in Thailand does so because that is the Thai way. That's amazing.
~Richard Baugh
 

>From The World Almanac, 1998

Life Expectancies in Asia

         Male    emale
 Japan  77  82
 Singapore 73  79
 S. Korea  68  74
 Malaysia  67  73
 N. Korea 67  73
 China  67  69
 Thailand  65  72
 Mongolia 64  69
 Vietnam  64  68
 Philippines 63  68
 Indonesia 59  63
 Myanmar 58  63
 Laos  51               54  Cambodia 48  51 
>From the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree

Query by Cheers
I'd be interested to hear which bars people reckon are, or were, the best in South East Asia. I'll throw a couple in for a start: 
Cap'n Greggs on MH Del Pilar in Manila. Used to be used as a Manila outpost for his Puerto Galera diving operation. Quiet drinking bar overlooking the street. 
Firehouse on MH Del Pilar. Some of the most beautiful girls you would ever meet plus video clips well before they were mainstream action. 
The Border Bar in Mae Sai, Thailand. A small place on the road to Mae Sai Guest House. Just nice relaxing atmosphere but always with the impression that something was about to happen. 
Madrid Pizza Bar on Patpong, BKK. Good food, friendly waitresses, great pizza. Mostly expats. I remember one time there when I went to pay I realised that I didn't have enough money-I offered to phone up a mate to come over and give me some but they said �No, just come back later and pay� 

Added by pi di 
The best is Hollywood II at Nana Plaza in Bangkok, Thailand. 

Added by diogenes 
Hare & Hounds - Soi Cowboy, Bangkok - Sit on the verandah and watch the �world� go past. 
Jools Bar - Soi Nana, Bangkok (not in the plaza - but close enough) 
Hollywood II - Nana Plaza, Bangkok (just for the music!) 
Blue Velvet - Kalayan Makati, Manila (above Galleon) 
Magombos - P. Burgos Makati, Manila 
Geronimo - Makati Ave, near P. Burgos, Manila 
Cathouse - Kalayan Makati, Manila 
365 (or somesuch number) - Orchard Towers, Singapore 
Long Bar - Raffles Hotel, Singapore (but only on expenses!!) 
Inya Lake Hotel - Rangoon (OK, this is my No. 1) 
BBB - Mandalay, Burma (an oasis in a culinary desert) 
Strand Hotel - Rangoon (not as expensive as you might think) 
Outside Bar - Yusana Garden, Rangoon 
Terrace Bar, Old section, Kangawgyi Hotel - Rangoon (No.2 for me but I don't expect anyone to understand - except him, him and him) 
All city bars I see, but then I have to work for my living out here. The names of the beach and hill bars are all an alcoholic blur, and quite right too. 
Added by Cheers 
I'd forgotten about Cathouse in Makati. That is a good bar. I thought about Raffles but I was in there playing snooker a couple of years ago and, considering the amount of money they charge, I would have thought they would have had the long cues and bridges for use on their full size table, but alas, no.

Added by Farang 
The Hollywood II in Nana Plaza just for the music? Yeah, right. (snicker) If only those naked ladies wouldn't so distract you from enjoying the music. (The way some of them move, they must be tone deaf.) The truly best bar sadly is no more. It's was Lucy's Tiger Den not far from Patpong in Bangkok. Old Tiger was a WWII seabee (US Navy construction engineer) and some American Legion Post was there in exile from its old home in Shanghai. The walls were lined with photos of everybody who'd set foot in Asia in the last century, probably. All sorts of mercenaries, journalists, world travelers, authors, secret agents (some of the above actually real, but most of them phonies) used to hang out there. The bar was a bit of a cross between a Fellini movie and Monte Python. It would have been the perfect setting for a James Bond film (or a Woody Allen flick). Tiger's health caused him to move his bar to Manila about ten years ago. Then he ended up losing a leg to diabetes (I think). He snuffed it not long afterward. If the bar's still in Manila, I hardly think it's the same. 

Added by andy
I think I might plump for Apocalypse Now in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City - good disco, nice pool table, handy outside patio for a quieter drink, and staff who are very good at quickly remembering you. For a nice quiet bar in Bangkok with wonderful food, both Western and Thai, I'd go for The Ship Inn on either Soi 23 or 24 off Sukhumvit Road, the Soi that runs off down the side of a BP petrol station going to one end of Soi Cowboy. 

Added by Mick 
Rolling Stones in Saigon is number one. 

Added by alan whicker 
The Ship Inn is in Soi 23 just before Soi Cowboy and the petrol station is a shell one. Not a bad pub but gone a little downhill in the recession: not the same atmosphere. 

>From another galaxy entirely

I spent the best dancing nights in my life at THE ROOM in Sakuragaoka, Shibuya. It's under a ramen shop, and if you ask around you'll find it. I'm talkin' crucial dub reggae, acid jazz and hip hop mixed in with drum 'n' bass to soulful rarities from the 60's 'n' 70's. Some of my best memories of Japan were dancing to choice tunes until the sun came up, then walking through the dawn streets, the raven caws echoing off the buildings, finally crashing out in Yoyogi Koen 'til the shade moved, then sleeping on the Odakyu line home. Also, I met really cool Nihonjin youth there, and without the cheesy gaijin guy seeks language exchange and more element. Try YELLOW in between Ropponggi and Shibuya for a more techno-ish feel. My head vibrated for 3 days after a night of drum 'n' bass there, and I never went back after. You won't lose with THE ROOM, though. I'm in Costa Rica now, and boy am I jonesin' for some Tokyo style nightlife, I tell you. Oh yeah, it ain't cheap, either. Plan on spending about 2500 yen for an entrance, with 2 drinks. Another thing, if it's cold out, the Yamanote line is good to sleep on. It just goes around and around, and it's warm. New Year's Day 1998 some friends and I must have logged 5 orbits of rest. Kiss Tokyo for me!! 
~Umagi
 

>From The World Almanac, 1998
Number of people per television in Asia

Japan  1.2 
Mongolia 19
Singapore 4.4
Vietnam  28
S. Korea  4.8 
China  32
Malaysia  9.5 
Myanmar 45
Philippines 9.5
N. Korea 67
Indonesia 17 
Cambodia 133
Thailand  17
Laos     no information