RKS 2025 Travel: Destination Southeast Asia (Short Attention Span Version)

ON A GROUP TOUR: WHO IS LEADING THE TROOPS

Group tours are guided by an itinerary designed by the tour company. A schedule of activities is in the itinerary and a timeframe for execution. This is not to say every minute is planned. There are often slots of free time to pursue your own activities.

There may also be elective activities, often at a cost.

My experience is an early breakfast and out the door on the bus no later than 09:00. Onward tourist soldiers!

Many tours are cross jurisdictional involving planes, ferries, ships and railways.

A with you all the time “tour director” travels with you throughout your tour. The tour director handles transportation, feeding times, site admissions and offers insights as the sites visited. Indispensable for medical emergencies of which there were two on this trip requiring hospital admissions. Tour directors assist with visa and entry requirements where possible.

A tour director is a mother hen, confidant and drill sergeant all executed in a diplomatic fashion….hopefully. On this tour we had a very skilled and gentle diplomat. This was made apparent in an airport in transit security check where a Chinese tour director was bellowing commands in an aggressive fashion to his browbeaten group!

There is usually a country guide in addition to the tour director, an expert on the sites visited in each country .

At times the incessant commentary delivered on a bus microphone is just a bit too much if you have had a long day and want moments of quiet to savour what you have seen .

Next: Your fellow travellers: What to expect

RKS 2025 Travel: Destination Southeast Asia (Short Attention Span Version)

ON A GROUP TOUR: IN THE ARMY NOW

Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia in four days. 8 flights in 14 days. All this is an ambitious undertaking.

In joining a tour group you lose a great deal of independence. You are a prisoner of an itinerary. Up at 4:30 a.m. to catch that ferry. A plethora of morning out the door and on the bus at 07:00. But on the bright side of life as the song goes in “Life of Brian” you will see more than you could ever do on your own. Many details are taken care of so a tour can be a stress reduction experience. You are in the army now.

Forrest Gump stated “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’ll get and while an itinerary offers certainty who is in your group is a box of chocolates. Introverts may struggle with the forced socialization. Extroverts will delight.

NEXT: Who is leading the charge of the Light Brigade?

RKS 2025 Film: “Meet, Greet & Bye”: Feel Happy, Feel Sad and Finish with a Smile

The feature Filipino movie “Meet, Greet & Bye” commences a North American theatrical release 14November2025. It has its happy lighthearted moments, nose dives into sadness and pulls up the throttle to the land of smiles.

Baby Lopez Facunda (Maricel Soriano), a dynamo Filipina mother and grandmother reveling in her family life and feeding them faces a challenge of the reoccurrence of her cancer.

The family urgently demands (not asks) Baby undergo chemotherapy resisted fiercely by Baby not wanting to yet endure the side effects of chemo. Just returned from United States son Tupe (Piolo Pascual) manages to convince her to undergo chemo if he secures tickets for a meet and greet with Baby’s K-Pop idol Park Seo-Joon. That attempt is riddled with hilarity.

Attempts are made by Brad (Joshua Garcia), younger brother to Tupe, to secure miracle medicine perhaps a sad reflection on desperation to find the “miracle cure”.

The Facundo family jolly on its shell is suffering covertly (at least initially) from jealously, resentment, broken promises, misunderstandings, fatherly rejection, family expectations and the hidden wounds of Filipino emigration. And as we all know or may soon know death and dying in a family can rip it apart or conversely wholly or partially heal it. This is food for thought. Is the film about these less than humorous attributes and comedy is but a way to deal with them?

There is certainly nothing wrong with the serious been delivered with hearty chuckles now and then.

Directed by Cathy Garcia-Sampana.

You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAT2bQxDyVM

RKS 2025 Film Rating 86/100.

RKS 2025 Travel: Destination Southeast Asia (Short Attention Span Version)

WHY THESE DESTINATIONS?

Being a dedicated Europhile feeling most at home particularly in Portugal and Greece I have been willingly absconded to Southeast Asia by a “significant birthday” present and no I am not referring to 65…God no!

Being an “Ugly Canadian” but not along the 1958 novel “The Ugly American” it is not the lack of McDonalds, Tim Hortons or Canadian consular offices that make me shy away from Southeast Asia or fear of the Kung Flu (thanks Trumpy) or SARS emanating from ill managed Chinese virology centres but a total unfamiliarity with the languages and a different alphabet. I can live without Budweiser but street signs I can read are a wonderful security blanket.

My God I travelled through the Iron Curtain full of confidence (or blissful ignorance) and now chickenshit fear of different alphabets. Is this a phobia suffered by old gizzards…now I told you this is not a 65 celebratory event.

Next: Deprivation of Liberty and the “Group Tour”

RKS 2025 Wine: Intimidated by German Spätburgunder? It’s Pinot Noir!

Strange that there is no mention on the label of this German “Pinot Noir” of its German name Spätburgunder. Fear of intimidating the Canadian market thinking they might be imbibing some bizarre concoction?

Aroma: Not one of those dainty Pinot Noirs with delicate raspberry and strawberry instead exhibiting some aggressive and deep black cherry, blueberry and dark chocolate. There are no steadfast rule promulgating an edict requiring Pinot Noirs to be dainty and sensual.

Palate: This fellow has some bite with a full somewhat brackish mouthfeel knit with the black cherry, blueberry and dark chocolate discerned on the palate. The finish is somewhat diminished by perhaps just a tad of excess acidity.

Personality: I am immediately warm and friendly on the nose but a bit curt on the finish.

Food Match: Schwienshake.

Cellarbility: Don’t let this go past 2026.

Price: $18.95 CDN.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 86/100.

(Horizn29 2023 Pinot Noir, Qualitätswein, Rheinhessen, Andreas Oster Weinkellerei, Bodenheim, Germany, 750 mL, 12%).

RKS 2025 Film: “Diva Futura”: Artistic Pornography with Morals?

Riccardo Schicchi and Ilona “Cicciolina” Staller formed Italy’s first porno studio and talent agency Diva Futura in 1980’s Rome with a goal of changing Italy’s conservative sexual morality. Schicchi’s Girl Friday, Debora Attanasio office manager and publicist, wrote about Diva Futura, her book, the foundation for this Italian film.

A fascinating recounting of Diva Futura in conservative Rome of the 1980’s and 90’s interlaced with questions of morality and artistic freedom. Schicchi (Pietro Castellitto) muses early in the film that his ideas were scandalous and immoral, but it put the agency on the front pages of Rome’s newspapers. Society condemns Diva Futura yet it is drawn to it.

The stories of Schicchi, Attanasio (Barbara Ronchi) and porn starlets Cicciolina (Lidija Kordic), Eva (Tesa Litvan) and Moana Pozzi (Denise Capezza) are an integral part of Diva Futura’s history.

The film pits morality and artistic freedom faced by Diva Futura and its starlets. Some of its unabashed challenges to Italian sexual mores could have been founded in the bullying of Schicchi in elementary school causing him to reject the attitudes of male virility and machoism and praise the attributes of womanly beauty.

Actressses wished to work for Schicchi for his artistic and erotic bent a far cry from the Hungarian porno factory (was it a former slaughterhouse?) portrayed near the film’s conclusion. Schicchi repeatedly morns the degradation of pornography as driven by internet amateurs making films with no vision, no art and controlling the masses without poetry. Porn has been degraded to the extent it gives life to the mental disorders of the worst male.” Was Schicchi’s pornography artistic with a modicum of morality?

Italian authorities target Schicchi’s operations with arrests, confiscation and prison sentences despite some Catholic priests being the best customers in his clubs hence made increasingly hypocritical by the Catholic church failing to conduct his funeral services.

Debora remarks Schicchi’s big mistake was to openly attempt to change Italy’s sexual morality instead of covertly.

Despite the efforts of Schicchi, his wife, Eva, notes she made the biggest mistake of her life becoming a porn actress. Food for thought. Even “artistic and poetic” pornography claims its victims.

Directed by Giulia Louise Steiger.

Digital North American release 11 November2025.

RKS 2025 Film Rating 88/100.

RKS Literature: Australian Blackbirder Slavers (Pat Barker)

“He’d started as a “blackbirder” as so many of the older traders had, kidnapping natives to work on the Queensland plantations, and he was frank about his methods too. Make friends with them, invite them on board ship, get them drunk and Bob’s your uncle, By the time they come around they’re out at sea and there’s bugger all they can do about it.”

Pat Barker, “The Ghost Road”, 1995.

RKS 2025 Travel: Destination Southeast Asia (Short Attention Span Version)

GETTING THERE

Not brimming with excitement facing a 15 ½ hour flight from Toronto to Hong Kong with a two-hour layover waiting for a 3 ½ hour flight to Singapore.

The outboard flight and connecting flights to Singapore on Cathay Pacific one of the three best airlines in world as awarded in by Skytrax in 2025.

Dingy Airbus 350 plane with lavatories from prehistoric era and a less than cheerful cabin colour.

Have bulkhead seats in Economy with adequate but not overly generous legroom. Warning though to our left a baby change station in the family seats. Hoping the screeching baby and poop smells are at a minimum.

As the flight departs at noon a good part of the trip will be in daylight but oh no after lunch the cabin is dimmed to the pitch-black status illuminated by entertainment screens. Trapped in darkness like in a Joseph Conrad novel “Darkness at Noon”.

Holy Moses low life economy class passengers receive a menu with a choice and unlike my Air Canada Euro flights from Toronto the menu is far more interesting than Air Canada’s chicken and pasta and unlike Air Canada they do not run out of that cheap and cheerful chicken as it is not on the menu.

I choose a “Crispy Fish with Sweet and Sour Sauce” as a main but replace “crispy” with “soggy”. Started with “Turkey and a Seven Grains Salad”. The turkey is sliced processed sandwich meat. My God. Would they endure sandwich meat in Business Class! Wine, Rolf Binder Shiraz, in a paper cup. Delicious “Betsy” lager brewed exclusively for Cathay Pacific.

The dinner dish is shrimp in rice, actually there are even visible shrimp! Tasty.

Movie selection has a slight Chinese and Korean element to it. Watched “Trapped” a quasi-Chinese Mad Max film and a Hong Kong caper film “Smashing Frank” then an Italian film “Napoli New York”. Three movies watched and six hours remaining. I can’t read in the oppressive pitch-black flying prison I am in. Poor audio selection.

Arrive at Hong Kong’s massive airport and then off to Singapore. Dinner is chicken and rice in gravy. My stomach turns. The fruit salad is long past its prime and the miniscule wisp of lettuce has turned brown.

Take a prearranged car at Singapore airport to Shangri-La Hotel and collapse.

Made it but what shape am I in?

RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film: “Dream Eater”: Bereft of Terror

Poor Alex (Alex Lee Williams) is suffering from parasomnia clear at the beginning of the film he is a danger to himself and as the movie progresses a danger to his sweetheart, unsuccessful documentary filmmaker Mallory (Mallory Drumm). As appropriate, given his self destructive bent he is receiving medical care.

Off Mallory and Alex travel to a cottage in a deserted rural area to celebrate Alex’s thirtieth birthday a significant age for the “terror” to come. Yes, yet another deserted locale and found footage horror film. A pattern of predictability is setting in. The winter wonderland escapade, upon medical advice, is to be filmed in its entirety to enable a therapeutic diagnosis which given Alex’s behaviour is dangerously tardy. His doctor has warned parasomniacs have killed their bed partners. What horror watching Mallory act like a lamb going to the slaughter. Alex should be committed to institutional care under mental health legislation as a danger to himself and others. Interesting what love can do to impair rational judgement. Could that be a main point in this film?

A fuddly duddy Dr. Armitage author of a particular demonic possession book flits onto the scene like Dr. Everett Scott in “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and viewers understand the beast Alex is and is becoming of course spiced up by his mass killer cultist mother.

Alex repetitively spooks Mallory frightening the poor dear. Run Mallory, run but in a thespian sense her fright is a bit “stiff”. Theoretically the terror should start cascading about the screen but it is so predictable and formalistic saved by occasional bizarre whistling (not emphysema) and whirling camera work which due to its frequency may make the viewer dizzy.

A bit of a spicy conclusion. Who thought pregnancy test results could be so ominous. I’M BACK!

On an optimistic note could it be Mallory’s chance to Hot Doc fame? How much can filmmakers parlay their misery into a work of art?

Canadian theatrical release began 24October2025.

Directors are Jay Darkulic, Mallory Drumm and Alex Lee Williams.

RKS 2025 Canadian Film Rating 64/100.