Angeles right now (subjective, of course) .
Not much to do for next few hours might as well tap out some bits and pieces. Might help someone assess the AC situation as of now, October 2017. Subjective, naturally.
CPA flight Cebu Clark, some empty seats. Vans at Clark empty. Myself only passenger ex airport, in my particular van. Asked P400 pointed to board on wall, cause I wanted to pay 350. Four hundred it is.
My fav room available, surprised, never happen before. Always needed reservation. Maybe visitor numbers down = vacant rooms?
CPA Cebu charged 3,400 to Clark. Travel Agent AC charged 1,600 for return trip. Cebu CPA asked 24,000 pesos for manila Bangkok return. AC travel agent offered same return trip, admittedly different time frame, for 11,000 Pesos. Maybe CPA staff are on commission to charge foreigners crazy prices?
Renovation of Margarita Station mentioned before on ISG. I presumed it meant reno lower level restaurant area. Not so. Only kitchen reno'd, everything else the same (dowdy look / feel).
Trike drivers better behaved and not trying to rip off with prices. What happened? Luck so far, or is it Grab?
Sitting at a table at accom with one person, soon converged into 4 people and an 'advance' Christmas party. Only in the Phils. Friendly people, beat Thais in that respect (subjective / personal).
Walking St is buggered at Phillies end. 'Corruption' says one. That is, hot price quote from Contractor, corrupt official accepts. Contractor uses shoddy materials and cheap inexperienced labour. Official gets a kick back, road falls to pieces. Not many people walking in Walking St.
Ra nightclub getting more fucked with time. Was a leader before, now a loser. Kokomos perv spot at front row, still the same, elderly deviates (takes one to know one) in the main. I asked youngish guy sitting next to me "Whats the time" , he said "Apple". I said "No, I want to know the time". Funny, he told me time, and said "I wasnt boasting" , LOL. A fashion statement, if ever there was one. Apple (indeed). I had a watch, but my eyesight so bad, couldn't read the time. Lot more 8's and 9's in my life, now that my eyesight is deteriorating, LOL.
Continues to rain, but pooning does not stop for rain. Sad K's conspicuous by their absence. Or is it wishful thinking on my part?
I am worried bars will go out of biz, and angeles will fall out of favour with the p4 p girls. Must admit, over last 40 odd years, Angeles has always gone up and down, like a yo yo. One thing for sure, girls "more hungry" right now. When they jump to get me, they must be hungry!
This is one of my better trips for years, even though technically there are some negatives buzzing around. Still good. Purchase your ticket right now, before they change the No Smoking Rule. Reckon authorities might back track and charge bars a fee which allows patrons to smoke on their premises = more visitors and more revenue for local authorities (and more lung cancer).
Cheers, and beers. Angeles rocks!
The K factor, some differences between them and us
1. They're younger, relate better, K Pop is THE hollywood of our western monger younger years.
2. Their English sucks worse than mine, so I feel smarter than them.
3. There's less drama, less boring. They don't make me laugh at their jokes.
4. If they fall in love, they don't test me with wanting freebies, they shower me with gifts, particularly cellphones.
5. They don't make me eat food with bread in it.
If you don't care about Koreans, don't take time to read this very long post
[QUOTE=Pompetus;2094555]Korea is probably the world's leader in prostitution. It is everywhere but good luck to all of you because it is virtually closed to Westerners. Why is this? [/QUOTE]
Many thoughtful points in your analysis, and in others' observations, but I dont necessarily agree that prostitution is everywhere in Korea. My sense is that as Korea achieves economic "progress," the society wants to clean up appearances, such as the barber pole businesses that were fronts for brothels. So perhaps prostitution is being restricted to a different, less visible, business model.
I have been taken a few times by Korean associates into the places where Westerners are usually excluded. You have to know where the specific bars and districts are. I got in only because my Korean associates convinced the managers to let me in. I will scrimp on details and just say that because of the way these businesses work, average Koreans can't afford them.
Koreans who visit them enter in groups. They go to a private karaoke room, where they are entertained by young women who also serve them food and drink, sometimes literally from the woman's hand to the man's mouth. If one of them likes the woman waiting on him, he negotiates to take her to a private room. Most of the women are young and attractive, some admit to being college students. These businesses typically have a hotel next door with rooms set aside for short-time use. The women I was with cleaned up quickly after the deed, gave me instructions about how to leave, and then left before I did. I presume they expected to return to one of the karaoke rooms to entertain other men. On several occasions one of my associates sent away the woman serving him and asked for another woman. Once he did this twice in the same karaoke room. I sensed that for Korean men, the dynamic was more about the beauty of the arm candy with whom they leave than about the potential quality of the sexual experience. It's almost as much about show as about sex.
[QUOTE=Pompetus;2094555]It is because our civilization has had to come to terms with pluralism and theirs has not. What we call racism, they call normal. Further, it also arises from their innate inferiority complex. They fear that they will be unfavorably compared to you, "She has fucked a Westerner. Now she'll never be satisfied ".[/QUOTE]
Koreans are definitely culturally exclusionary, but they do not feel inferior to everybody. They want the cachet of things American, and for that reason (within some constraints) will hire Koreans with American and European university degrees ahead of their own degrees. But they do regard themselves as being ahead of some others in the pecking order, and, because they are so oriented to hierarchy, pecking order is very important. It's tied to Confucian thinking and historical subservience to the Emperor. They think that wisdom and authority originate in the same place--from above, and that means from King, father, or teacher. This creates a lot of social stability, because everybody buys into the same rules and people are generally reluctant to rock the boat. But it also makes them risk averse and resistant to change and innovation.
I recently had conversations with Koreans about specific innovations from Chile and Indonesia, respectively. Their response: "we consider these societies to be inferior." (So, you think you can't learn from a country that is inferior to yours?) It never occurs to them that maybe developing countries sometimes find solutions to critical problems out of necessity, and that these ideas might be worth considering in more developed countries in which the same problems exist--but are clouded by the complexity of other dynamics. Koreans learn from mimicry-- especially from the Japanese--rarely from their own critical thinking and experimentation.
[QUOTE=Pompetus;2094555]Some have argued that Koreans are that way because they feel that Westerners are dirty and diseased and they do not want us defiling the women that they fuck.[/QUOTE]
Dirty and diseased may be one way to characterize it. Another explanation is that because of their highly structured and hierarchical social expectations, they are uncomfortable with societies like the U.S. with weaker social contexts, i.e., fewer hard rules and lots of deviation from norms. The idea of Koreans buying up bars in Angeles and imposing Korean structures in them makes perfect sense. Also, because of the economic class component of their models of prostitution, and because the process of procuring is a collective endeavor, maybe Koreans are less concerned about bargain hunting as are individual mongers from Western countries. That is, "cheap Charlie" doesn't cut it among Koreans when other countrymen are watching. It makes sense that Filipinas would respond favorably to that, but "100% rule"--that may depend on messages from bar owners and managers.
[QUOTE=Pompetus;2094555]Some have argued that Koreans are that way because they feel that Westerners are dirty and diseased and they do not want us defiling the women that they fuck. If that is so, then why do they long to fuck Western women who for the most part aren't attracted to them because western women perceive them as nerds and wimps?[/QUOTE]
A few years ago somebody on the board described hearing this among men in Thailand or some such place. The locals described it as wanting to "ride the great white horse." It may be quite pervasive. It's a sort of bucket list thing, like aspiring to climb Mt. Everest, even among those of us with no realistic opportunity or skills to do so.