mardhi

Blimey I would not have recognised Top in a hundred years. Did someone steal her mirror????? !!!!!!

Beggars belief that a suspect for murder, which occured inside a police cell, then managed to get out. Even more amazing is the prat was loitering barely couple hundred yards from where it all took place.

According to that link for Chonburi(Pattaya), Central Festival has only one movie screen. Is that right? Can't say I have ever been there but I would have thought it had a lot more screens than that. By the way, is the other Big C in Pattaya North still got a cinema up top?

Reagan would have stayed on board - however not sure if he would know if it was for real or just a movie set !!!

Fascinating insight into the Pattaya of old. From your pic is the hotel in the centre, the Montien? I assume the one on the left is the Dusit but maybe wrong.

Pork and chicken are deffo cheaper at markets than in supermarkets and often fresher as is seafood/fish. Mainstream fruit & vegetables are as you say cheaper as well at markets.

Imported dairy products are taxed high. However then you also have the fact that demand is relatively low and suppliers charge a premium as they sell so little and have high wastage on perishable products. I call it the Mercedes approach to pricing. They know that they have a premium brand and that few people can afford say 3m baht for a car. They also figure that that person who can, could also afford 4m baht. So they load the price and sell it for 4m. It even applied to their models they make here in Thailand - which have far fewer taxes but they still apply the same logic. Much better off buying a Toyota Camera for 1.2m baht than a C class Benz for nearly 4m baht in Thailand. However, they sell C class by the bucket load here as its a status symbol. Odds are Benz are making more profit per unit sold in Thailand than any other market in the world. It's just how the logic works in Thailand.

Simple Simon used to be my defacto home for an English brekkie when I lived in BKK some 10 years ago and would head down to Pattaya for the weekend. Times have changed and you can get the same food everywhere now. Best British bread is still at Friendship and badged up as "Rick's bakery" - large 'Bloomer' style bread, pre-sliced and still best bread in Pattaya for a real British style loaf of bread. Makes the best toast by the way. Unfortunately Rick was killed in a motorbike accident but his missus has kept things going well.

As there are quite a few residents or semi permanent residents feel free to add in where certain stuff can be purchased especially hard to get foodstuffs from home. Big plus for me the other night was doing a shop in Big C extra - hardly ever go in there and do most food shopping at Foodland. However as I was in Homepro I wanted a few things and eventually walked out with a laden trolley and about 8000b lighter. anyhow the big PLUS is the new cheese range. The old Carrefour range is long gone and replaced by Casino or Casio which apparently is the French competitor of Carrefour who own a chunk of Big C. Their cheese range is very good and very cheap. Think of it as about half the price of Friendship and Foodland Cheese wise. Bacon & Sausages If your near that very Big C Extra its a hop skip and a jump 300 years down Soi Yume where you come across some half deserted development of shop houses on the left hand side - set back a bit. Anyhow this is home to KPK, suppliers to most of the pubs/restaurants for meat products. a kilo of Pork sausages is about 210b - elsewhere they are about 180-200b for 500grams. Its also frozen and the bacon is about 1/3rd of the price of Foodland. Retail customers more than welcome and they have loads of sauces and dried stuff like mustards, pickles etc as well. Wine. Some of you maybe familiar with Mont Clair - its used as house wine in loads of places. You may not be aware why its so cheap. Its because it comes in as fruit concentrate and is made into wine in Thailand. Different taxation levels apply. Anyhow they also have other brands and I had a 299b bottle of Peter Vella "smooth red" the other night. Very drinkable plonk and at that price its dirt cheap (for Thailand). Almost all their wines be it Mont Clair and Peter Vella plus some others that escape me are all easy to drink and pretty potent in some cases (MC shiraz being good example). You can buy these wines almost anywhere supermarket wise - its not cheap because its crap - just that they avoid the taxes that others have to pay. As I think of other tips I will add them here and feel free to add your own.

I remember giving a girl 1500b so she could get her fridge out of the Pawn shop. Gawd only knows how many shoes & dresses have also been paid for but thats about it big ticket wise aside from tits and bars !!!!!!

I think the Morlam concert last time was held in the grounds of the old X-Zyte disco.

This hotel is owned by the Dynasty Inn folk so will likely be good from day 1. Plenty of reasonably priced hotels now in Soi 4.

I think barfines as a ratio of bar income will reduce over time and its being seen already. freelancing will become the order of the day for most bars. This is already being felt and was claimed to be a deciding factor in the closure of Anaconda (I don't believe its the main reason - but I can understand it would be a contributing factor as its true). The police are now making owners responsible if their staff test positive for drugs on the premises if they have a raid. Now we all know how many LB's take drugs and this is a big change in enforcement. LB bars are marginal in terms of profit as it is. a 100,000b fine could wipe out 2/3 months profit for many bars and all because one LB tested positive for Yaba/Ice etc.

BKK Bank is one of the hardest for 'visitors' to open an account at. I remember asking our HR girls when I got moved here to set me up with a checking account. Talk about major hassle for them. I just assumed it was easy. Managed to get one at the branch where my employer held an account but even to this day, staff in BKK bank are amazed I have a checking account (which I actually hardly ever use) and have switched to savings accounts with SCB as they had more branches, more ATM's and less queues. The good thing is/was that you never need to wait - as soon as they see the cheque book in your hand, they come and pull you out of the queue. BKK bank have seriously lost out on the Pattaya expat market. I'd hazzard a guess that almost everyone is using either kasikorn or SCB for their banking. However BKK Bank do remain the largest bank - which will probably make it even more annoying for them.

Personally I think the whole scene has been slipping along the same timeline as JSB's fall from grace. To me at least, there used some great nights out - plenty of girls, plenty of fun. maybe just sign of getting older I assume, but it feels less fun now.

Pattaya has been slowing down for a number of years - at least as far as the traditional monger. However Pattaya is growing overall and its not just Russians and Chinese. The city is expanding at a huge rate of knots. Probably a fair amount of dodgy money being pumped into property to clean it up. The Domestic market for tourist arrivals is one of notable growth areas. Pattaya is now seen as a fashionable place for money Thai's for a weekend. Gawd only knows why though. Slowly but surely the city is evolving and needing less emphasis on 'seedy' and more relying on the 'fun' atmosphere. A lot of this is coming from money earned from the seedy bits but nobody pay;s any attention to the source of the funds, only that they do have it (the money). All the Thai focussed clubs are packed out and new venues opening all the time. Personally I don't see the market changing back to the likes of 10 years ago - it will just keep evolving and seedy will form a minute amount of the overall revenue. Still a lot of money, but much less as a ratio of total money flying about.

Pattaya has too many small staffed bars and Bangkok has too many large staff bars. Bangkok needs more bars with fewer staff (i.e 8-12) and Pattaya just has too many to be viable. In Pattaya, they need fewer bars with perhaps 50% more staff per bar.

BKK needs a new bar with Laos girls and lots of 'em.

Funny enough I was thinking the same just last week while sat overlooking the Marina. "Its just like Monte Carlo" as I sipped on my Krug champagne on the banks of Soi Bukeau.

Ironically, like Thatcher - Glenda is a conviction politician. The difference is her convictions were nothing like Tony (Phoney) Blair's and opposite ends of the world to Thatcher. Probably mad as a hatter these days, but you gotta respect her going with her gut feel (even if you do not agree with it) and especially the fact she is allowed to say it freely and without reprimand.

Just read an interesting comment about this and my geography knowledge of Boston is Zip having never been there. he commented that in his opinion, the two guys were likely at M.I.T to plant the explosives for another attack. Those seemed to be referred to in news reports as bombs being thrown at the police. Certainly sounds plausible to me.

Perhaps the FBI file on him helped somewhat - they certainly seemed to move very fast on this one. It does make you wonder though - half the developing world give their right arm for the opportunity that living in the US can bring. However there are always some who seem to resent/fight against it.

Gip was not there on the 17th when I went in for 3 hours. Probably gone home for Songkran knowing her. Maybe back on 22nd but I would not put too much chance on it as the bar is deadly quiet so many girls are lazy to rush back.

Grantham, where MT was born and lived her childhood is NOT in Yorkshire Paccers.

I agree with DC - political threads should really be a no-no. My old dear departed Papa said never talk about religion or politics and I tend to avoid all such discussions myself.