Kaoboi Bebobp

Happened to me 3 times in 6+ years. Happened during the recent Chinese new year. I think it's because the buses are on very quick turnarounds and are forced to refuel en route. It is a big pain though when you time your arrival in Pats for a meeting.

21 hours ago, Jingthing said:

They're OK for Pattaya, but Bangkok has much better. 

They are better than OK, IMO. Living in BKK now, I buy beans from Brainwake Cafe (bottom of 33 Suk) and Wawee brand at some big Aeon MaxValu stores. The latter are 250 baht/250g bags. But the Benjamit arabica beans are almost as good for half the price (140 baht). I use a Viet phin to make coffee.

This is in Pattaya. The best place still is Benjamit on the edge of the Tuesday-Friday market grounds off Soi Buakhao. It's 140 baht for roasted 100% arabica beans in 250g bag. The beans come from the Chiang Rai area. I buy the Vienna roast. There are more expensive beans.

1 hour ago, David B in Thailand said:

Is there a bus from Pattaya that travels to Don Muang Airport?

As far as I know, there is no direct bus from Pattaya bus terminal to DM. What you can do is take the Mo Chit bus, then taxi to DM Airport.

I wonder if he's one of the (couple of dozen*) drivers who wouldn't take me from Suk 22 or Prom Pong to Phra Khanong over the past year.  *No exaggeration. Some nights 3-4 taxis refused before I could find transport home, which is very much why I go home before the BTS closes now.

That said, it might be nice if some of you recognize that their plight -- "no customers, no eat" -- is a lot more dire than your worst nightmare, which might be having to drink Red Label because the Black is "finished".  

I tried the Airport train to airport, then the Jomtien bus a couple of times. You can wait up to two hours for a seat on the Jomtien bus if your timing is way off.

At Ekamai bus station, you might wait no more than half an hour for a Pattaya bus, which leaves as often as every 10 minutes in the morning to maybe half an hour later in the day. It's 108 baht one way.

You cannot book a return ticket -- but it's unnecessary since it leaves so often from either Pattaya or Bangkok terminals.

Leaving Ekamai, it's 25-30 minutes to the motorway toll gate, but sometimes Sukhumvit traffic adds 10-15 minutes to that time.

There are loads of unfinished station elevators along the Sukhumvit BTS system. I remember seeing some elevator installation activity months ago but that's all disappeared now.

No, I think they're mosquitoes. The last 10 days to 2 weeks, I don't go a night without bites now, whether on my 4th floor balcony or the interior. One night, I had 5 bites on my shoulder. This never happened before. I could go for weeks without a bite in the apartment. BTW, I am in Bangkok, but my Dark Side unit also proved to be a mosquito resort recently. Something's going on with the mosquito population.

Add: My comment was aimed at the earlier ones. But fleas carried by pigeons is an interesting theory since there are many pigeons around my older multi-tower complex.

I've had little of this experience, the last time being years ago. The motorcycle taxi drivers, however, are another thing. About 20% of them are insanely fast and reckless. A small percentage simply don't want to take a farang (worse in Pattaya, but then . . .). Best of all though are the lady motocy drivers. They're careful and polite -- I frequently throw in a tip to them.

My sole gripe is that the taxi cabs won't take you where you want to go. In daytime, it's not a big problem. In nighttime, I average 3-4 refusals per journey, with 5 refusals the most so far. And I'm only going from Prom Pong to Phra Khanong. I've been here 6+ years and I and my friends can speak Thai for this transaction. So there's no confusion.

2 hours ago, anotheruser said:

I love curly fries and have not seen them in a store in Thailand ever. Believe me I have searched high and low for them.


Sent from my iPad using Thaivisa Connect

I've never seen them either in countless visits to frozen food sections. I wasn't looking for them but I do buy frozen fries quite often, straight-cut and shoestring.

Lack of bus service on Buakhao is making a big impact on where I choose to go. It happened on Christmas night.

I stood watching baht buses go by from Klang at 3rd Road. No idea where they stopped, if they did at all. I wanted to go to Cafe Racer on LK Metro. Do I or don't I? 

Do: Ride on a bus along 3rd, get off at Xcyte, cross deadly traffic, walk 200-300 metres to entrance of LK. Walk down LK to Cafe Racer. But what do I do after finishing when I stay behind Big C Extra? Walk down Diana, cross deadly traffic to catch northbound bus, get off at Klang. Unlikely there's an eastbound bus at the pickup spot. Conclusion: Walk all the way to my Soi Yume room.

Don't: Walk down Klang to Buakhao and to New Plaza. Reverse field at the end. 

I did the latter.

Side note: I had to walk all the way to Foodland and then back to the room because not a single baht bus came by, except a Russian and an Indian charter. This is at 11 pm.

Any idea that I want to go to Triangle Bar, Witherspoon's or Cafe Racer is pretty much dead now when the only choice is a series of long walks, lengthy bus rides on congested roads or moto taxi. I do not like moto taxis; I think the feeling is mutual.

Sitting here in Bangkok, my view is that I won't be going to Pattaya much, if at all now, if I have no convenient transport options. Alternatively, be very strategic in booking your hotel location.

No buses on Buakhao was a bit of a shock today. Has anyone seen them on 3rd Rd.?  Guess I'll find out tonight.

But what a pain, both having to make numerous extra walks and having to cross heavy traffic on either 2nd or 3rd Roads to catch or after disembarking from a bus. There just might be a lot of pedestrian accidents. Renew your insurance.

Was in the Viet embassy in Bangkok today. An American ahead of me was over the moon when he was permitted to order a one-year visa for 7,000 baht.  Said he'd tried and failed three times already for a 1-year, the last time in June.  

I, as a Canadian however, could only get a one-month or three-month single entry. The one-month single was 2,200 baht/$US60, well over the online ordering services fees.  I was on a fact-finding mission and won't need one till next February. I will probably buy it there to avoid the horror of the VoA window and the snail-like efficiency of Viet immigration at SGN.

Interestingly, it was not what I would call busy at 2 pm here in the high season.

It's not BIG money, 60-100 baht a small bottle of beer. Or 100-130 baht for a shot of Black Label. Pints of ordinary beer and whiskeys at 160 and up is big money in the sense that we are subsidizing the huge rents demanded by local landlords. I just refuse to pay for their Mercedes S-Class or Pattana School fees. The Bangkok bars can only take partial blame because they have no control as rents and "other payments" skyrocket.

Mostly though my big money phrase goes back to the past when I haunted the Cowboys and Nanas of the city. It's gotten even worse, with one bar I heard demanding 320 baht for a lady drink. Anyway, all water under the bridge for me. As I said, haven't been in a go-go in 4 years.

13 hours ago, Gary A said:

 

As far as I am concerned, when Washington Square died, Bangkok died as a place to enjoy myself. Some of us had hopes that a copycat area would spring up somewhere else. Unfortunately in the bar business, the only people who make money are the landlords with the outrageous rents. Us old farts don't spend enough money for business owners to take a chance. All we have left are pleasant memories of the past. You have to move far out of Bangkok to find 70 - 80 baht beers and places quiet enough to have  decent conversations. We simply don't enjoy overpriced drinks, ladies begging for super expensive drinks and ear splitting trash that now passes for music. Time moves on and so do we.

Bang on, GaryA. When Denny's at the (former) entrance to W Square closed and moved to the new Holiday Inn, it was another -- classic phrase coming -- nail in the coffin. Khun Som kept the price at 65 baht a beer for a while but now it's in line (out of line!) with all the other BKK bars.

Yes, you can pull up a plastic stool in the subsois behind, well, just about anywhere and get a big Chang for, I dunno, 75 baht. Or you could journey all the way out to Lat Phrao or Udom Suk for a cheap afternoon. But overall, not one single place that I and friends used to go to regularly remains open in BKK. That's a lot of places, not all of them cheap either. I don't mind paying more for a place that's entertaining -- I"m not talking go-go bars, which I haven't entered in 4 years. 

BKK is a sad place these days. BTW, gone are the days when I spent big money. It's never worth it anymore.

In Bangkok? Not a chance any more. Go to Pattaya. You'll find lots of similarly cheap friends on Soi Buakhao. You can prop each other up and moan about the girls who never seem to look your way. 

18 hours ago, SiSePuede419 said:

Wow, people actually are *happy* to overpay @ tops?  The only thing I buy there is German 100% rye bread--available at every Traders Joe's in America, but only available at Tops in Thailand.  You guys have no idea how much variety of food is available in America.  No one moves to Pattaya for great food.  Or golf. ?

Oh my! How will any other nation hold its head up ever again?  I guess Taipei, Shanghai, Singapore, Montreal, Paris, London, Rome, Sydney, Copenhagen, Monte Carlo, Auckland, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rio Janeiro, Panama City, Zurich, et al, can only hang their heads in shame.  

The new TOPS will be worth it, even if it can cut down the number of crossings by a few times a month. To me though, the more valuable news will be when NPW is reconnected with Klang. 

3 hours ago, Asiantravel said:

 

 

no it hasn't.it was 108 at 6 o'clock this morning the Bangkok and 108 to return at 11.30 sitting in fairly comfortable seats with air-conditioning as opposed to sitting sideways on bench seats

In fact, the Pattaya-BKK bus has seen the fare decrease 3 times in 2-3 years from 124 to: 119/115/108. 

It was only earlier this year the baht bus to Beach was 30 baht. A friend who just took it recently paid 50 though. (I don't take it because I have to go to the Darkside so I take my moto.)

As someone else pointed out, the end of January is the beginning of the VN Tet New Year, running till Feb. 1 this year. Very busy and transport difficult to arrange because so many Viets are travelling and vacationing.

No forums like this, that's for sure. But FB is full of "expats in Vietnam" pages. Pick a city and there's a huge forum. Sorry, but this forum does not allow links.

6 hours ago, IMA_FARANG said:

I could live and have lived in Ho Chi Minh City.

My problem would be with the banks.

The U.S. government does not like me sending my Social Security pension to HCMC.

It has even been suggested by Social Security officials that i would be "Unpatriotic" to send my money to Vietnam.

I can and do that here in Thailand easily.

Otherwise i might be in Vietnam.

For god's sake, the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

I know, I spent 7 years there from 1966 to 1973

Nearly 2/3 of the people now  living in HCMC were not even born then.

On a plane from HCMC to Bangkok last year I met a Vietnamese man who was studying Mechanical Engineering in the Universuty of Connecticut.

My choice of where to live would be Nha Trang or Vung Tau if I was able to do it.

 

 

I'm not American. But there must be thousands of Americans in VN, some of whom have their pensions sent there. A way around it is to have the pension sent to a US bank and have the bank wire it to the VN bank.  Simple.

Interestingly, I intend to move from Bangkok to Vung Tau next spring. I understand from some FB expat forums that expats avoid government owned banks, i.e., joint stock enterprises, which is code for partially government owned companies. They recommend private banks, which tend to be more business oriented and are not spilling over with regulations and practices that are the antithesis of business and customer service. I need to investigate this more. 

Side note: More and more friends, most of whom I've known for nearly 10 years, are leaving Thailand, some folks going back home and some moving to Cambodia and VN.

34 minutes ago, thai3 said:

650 baht to look at a load of toys, no thanks all the same.

Same price as Dinosaur Planet, I believe. What overpriced nonsense. It's the same reaction I had when I saw the menu at Wish Beer, 300+ to 400+ baht per pint. Seeing how busy both Dinosaur Planet and Wish Beer were recently, locals don't seem to be put off, though. 

On 12/1/2016 at 2:54 PM, jumbo said:

English 4th language here so I am not sure what you mean

British English uses "nought" for "zero". He's saying you are short a zero. A joke, I think. 

On 12/3/2016 at 5:55 PM, Sheryl said:

More farang-couple friendly bars to be found on St 278 and 282.

^^^ Yes, this. Nicer bars and restaurants for couples south of Sihanouk Blvd., which is sub-districts BKK 1 and BKK2. A must late afternoon-early evening sit on the second floor overlooking the Tonle Sap/Mekong Rivers is the FCC on the riverside at St. 178. But if you're a Pattaya boy, then follow Richard's advice above. 

On 12/3/2016 at 8:09 AM, OMGImInPattaya said:

I would second The Loft by Maprachan Lake, Murphys Pub on NPW, or Livv at the top of Khow Talo. Also, the garden setting of Swiss Paradise Restaurant near Wat Suttawas is nice. Four choices for you . 

I would think that Murphy's Irish Pub will have a Christmas dinner since they have other special meals. BTW, it's on Khao Noi.