MrWorldwide

Dear Howitzer, what is the point you are trying to make with this thread?

Or you had nothing better to do, so you decided to torture me, trying to understand what are you going on about?

The rest of us seem to have understood what he was asking, Costas - are you having a Greek moment, my friend ?

jingthing is probably the man for this - he's our resident expert - but my experience travelling down Klang is that they will turn onto Beach Rd and stop just before Walking St. I then have to go around to Second Road if I want to go back from whence I came. The only time I've been able to get them to go to a specific location that isnt on their circuit is when we've agreed on a price upfront, and you can expect that to cost considerably more than 10 baht as its just you and the driver. I did see baht buses driving down the bar sois during Songkran but I assumed that was a one-off deal. I'll defer to those who use the service more than I do, esp the Jomtien brigade.

The aisles of Silly ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isles_of_Scilly

Had a fascination with that place since I saw it on a gardening program - of all things - many years ago. The idea of being able to grow plants from the subtropics outdoors anywhere in the UK just tickled me in strange places. The plant life reminds me of New Zealand - green and attractive if not the same as the tropical species we take for granted here in central Thailand.

Hi All,

One of my most vivid recollections of PP is walking down the stairs at Sharky's into the pitch black street - fortunately my hotel was very close by but it wasnt a pleasant sensation. I realise Cambodia isnt Thailand and I have to adjust my expectations, but when one of the main streets in the nation's capital has no street lighting at midnight, you can understand that I'm less inclined to stay in that street again. I'm guessing the area around the riverside has more lighting, but we all know where assumptions get us - any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

MrWW

Karaoke, it would seem, has claimed yet another victim, albeit a loan shark.

@docno, I'm pretty confident that most of the people making the noise in Pattaya were from Isaan - some of them live here, some live in Bangkok and I know several bargirls whose families made the trek down from the provinces just to be part of the action. Rednecks as far as the eye could see

Looks like a madhouse to me. I feel sorry for the few that decided to do their shopping at Central yesterday.

It was a madhouse, but seriously who would go more than 10 metres without realising what was going on ? When you see a cop on a motorbike with the white chalk or whatever that goo is all over his back, you have to know it's not a normal day in Pattaya.

Something no-one seems to mention in the news reports were the number of underage Thai kids wandering around with a bottle of beer or openly sitting in the bars drinking. I guess they realise that enforcing such things isnt exactly top priority for the BiB on a day like that.

I've called the fire department - JLCrab is absolutely on fire in this thread.

Us Lancastrians have got to stick together n210mp. My post was tongue-in-cheek, in the spirit of the OP. I was actually expecting herds of wildebeest or the hanging gardens of Babylon, Mr Worldwide.

Give Devil's Den a call - they'll show you a few sights you probably haven't seen in your travels. Sadly, my requests to take photos down there have been ignored - I guess I'll just have to be patient.

What old Pattaya? It was a fishing village little more than 50 years ago. Juxtaposition. That's a big word; it's bigger than marmalade.

It's all relative - were you expecting something from the Dutch quarter in Jakarta ? Perhaps some 30,000 year old rock art from northern Australia ?

Who cares,500 baht for punching a bloke out,cheap.

Right, and the part where PattayaOne publishes a photo of you sitting in a chair at the Soi 9 cop shop with a ladyboy pointing a finger at you ?

Priceless.

I don't believe the story.

Firstly the police didn't 'rush to the scene' so that has to be suspicious.

Secondly there was no medication lying around the room.

Thirdly there is no mention of a thai GF or wife out shopping or away with family up country..

Something very fishy indeed.

Right, because Thai reporters cover every possible angle in true Junior Detective fashion. Not sure if you're just taking the piss in response to the earlier post, but if this one has been thrown in the 'too hard' basket by Pattaya's finest, no amount of keystrokes will change that. The man is dead - lets not drag the rest of the population in for questioning just yet, Chief.

Agreed - all bets are off during Songkran : the locals are just infected with a virus that removes their ability to rationalise 'normal' behaviour completely. Had the white gunk applied to my face twice today while I tried to get to Big C Extra - the second time was more 'palm strike' than application but he was drunk and so were his young buddies : only an idiot would retaliate. Even outside Songkran, I'll let the katoeys go for the squirrel grip if it means I protect my wallet, but if one of them came at me with the gunk I would just wear it and keep walking : I can only conclude that the couple in question were over the whole thing (I was over it by Wednesday at the latest) when it happened. I could happily strangle the idiots who kept me awake all of last night, but what's happening downstairs would taken an Army to disperse - saw a cop on a motorbike who had clearly been given the treatment and presumably taken in it in his stride. If I went to Rio's Carnival - 2 million people per day - I doubt that I'd have any choice but to be swept along by the crowd. The FAQ is 100% correct - you either decide to GTFO early and act decisively well before the 18th or you grit your teeth and pray for the 20th : that's where I'm at right now.

Some of us belong in Psttaya and some of us belong under a Boulder - the bigger the better.

Agsin, why does this have to be an ongoing pissing contest ? You either see yourself here till the end or you don't - it was a very simple question that did not ask 'How fantastic would it be to swap Thailand's climate, food and lifestyle for your home country ?' ....

Right now, there are at least 100,000 completely insane Thais on the street below me with #%@# speakers blasting the most insane jungle samba I've ever heard - hour after mind-numbing hour - and they'll go right through tonight into tomorrow morning. Would I swap with most of the Americans, Brits or Australians sitting in a cool, quiet room reading Thaivisa with their favorite beverage beside them ? Probably not, because I came to Asia for a reason and it wasnt to live the next 20 years of my life in the same mundane fashion as the first 55. If I had the money, I'd live in Japan eight months of the year and SEA during the northern Winter, but that's not what the OP asked : he asked if I saw myself living here till the end and I've answered that. Whether I planned to stay right here, move to Chile and run guns into Central America or go back to Oz till I qualify for the Aged Pension, why would I need to justify any of those choices to anyone here ? Pure pissing contest in classic Thaivisa fashion.

Adios, Amigos.

Based on the video our friend has either been drinking jet fuel or there is something more than alcohol in his bloodstream. i've been so drunk I can barely sit up straight on the motosai taxi but I've never carried on like that - particularly sad to see someone that big cant handle his drink when some of the tiniest Thai women can drink all night and still manage a conversation at dawn.

That's because the over priced ''alcohol drink'' that you are buying them is diluted orange juice.

Well, it WAS orange .....

OP says he walks around for 12 hours a day along the streets of pattaya. I feel sorry for him. That is no life to lead...

Er, no - that would be @canarysun, when he's not riding the trains. Given that I have 3 crushed vertebrae in my lower back, I'd say my days of walking anywhere for 12 hours a day are long behind me, but thanks for your pity. I'll really need to rely on caring, sharing folk like yourself when I relocate to Cambodia in May.

Based on the video our friend has either been drinking jet fuel or there is something more than alcohol in his bloodstream. i've been so drunk I can barely sit up straight on the motosai taxi but I've never carried on like that - particularly sad to see someone that big cant handle his drink when some of the tiniest Thai women can drink all night and still manage a conversation at dawn.

I have lived here for 14 years. Were I to relocate to another country (unlikely), it would not be my home country (UK), because that country has changed beyond recognition.

The UK no longer feels like 'home' to me, which is a pity. Thailand is my 'home', warts and all

And I know that's been the case for several Australians I've spoken to, one who has been here since the end of the VN war. Worse still, he grew up in Sydney - there's just no going back to the Sydney of the 1960s and 70s - I arrived in Sydney in '69 and left in '85 so I've lived in a bit of a time warp myself. I expect that goes double for many cities in the UK.

<deleted>.

Perhaps you'd like to join me in Pattaya this morning - its 4:30am and the Thai karaoke joint across the road is still pumping out an abysmal choice of doof-doof at roughly 150dB, there are idiots down on Klang with speakers blaring on the back of pickup tracks and they were still squirting passing motorbike riders when I went past around 3am. I dont consider myself a wallflower - I've seen the sun come up from a barstool more times than I'd care to admit here - but there's absolutely no point when the Thais are in the grip of whatever this mania is. Songkran in Isaan sounds like absolute heaven compared to the completely ridiculous version of the festival we've got here, and I'm happy to report that I will indeed be avoiding it from this point forward. I accept this isn't the direction the OP wanted this thread to take so I'll leave it there.

a big part of the problem for me was the way that Thailand was promoted by my friend who moved there 15 years ago

he would post these beautiful pictures of exotic Asia and pictures of the landscape and temples and pretty girls and when I got there he lives in an absolute s*** hole in Bangkok there is no grass barely any trees the place smells roosters crowing at 3 o'clock in the morning and not stopping ever

there is no mention of any traffic no mention of the ridiculous heat no mention of the horrible pollution no mention of the inability to turn on the faucet to see clean water

yeah the Sopie houses were great yeah the bars in Pat pong a great yeah and massages are cheap ya some food is cheap

and yeah the taxis are cheap but what he also forgot to say is that we aren't that welcome here by the government and that has a way of filtering down to some of the people here but not all

as much as people want to complain about the police in the United States and I am one of them because a lot of times they arrest people for truly petty nonsense

but the reality is here you can get a lawyer and you can get yourself out of it and in Thailand you may lose your life and for many people that's a big deal

Losing your life is a big deal ? Really ?

As to the rest of your post, would you have believed your 'friend' if he'd told you the same unbelievable stories about Mexico ? There's a point where we believe what we want to believe - you should have just jumped in the first cab you could find, gone back to the airport and filed it under 'misadventure', yet somehow here we are 15 years later still obsessing over it. How long - cumulatively - have you actually spent in Thailand since 2000 ?

No such suggestion from me - clearly not a young man and we dont know his medical history or what medication he may have been taking, but I've slipped on the bathroom tiles a few times and hurt myself. A particularly unfortunate way to go, but none of us will live forever. RIP.

Ok - a bit tongue in cheek - but if there is one area of Pattaya where I can see the remnants of an 'old Pattaya' that slots in somewhere between the temples and the highrises, its the section of Second Road between Pattaya Klang and the Dolphin Roundabout. I took a wander down there today to see how far they had progressed with Centric Sea beyond the artists impressions and the early construction photos strewn across the net. Sure enough, they've pretty much finished it.

Clearly, both towers at Centric Sea are complete bar a small section of Tower 1, but it was the abandoned complex on the left and the derelict accommodation on the right that caught my attention, particularly the latter. The old giving way to the new - for many, that has to happen if Pattaya is to move forward, but I still get a kick out of seeing old buildings with a bit of character, particularly in a country with no clear colonial heritage.

This is what's left of the front of the old building - no telling what it's like inside and no danger of Frank Lloyd Wright being supplanted as the greatest architect of the 20th century, but a step up from the abominations that dominate much of Second Road, at least to my eyes.

The only section which appears to have been restored sits above a 7/11 - presumably the owners of the hotel opposite would like to see a little more TLC but I guess that's showbiz.

The Grand Sole Hotel has some very mixed reviews online, but apparently it is as old as the image in their marketing would have us believe, leading me to suspect that the people who designed the terrace stole their design cues from the hotel. Hardly a groundbreaking collection, but an interesting diversion on an afternoon dominated by idiots pouring icewater down people's backs.

I dont think it was you, raro - its a perfect storm according to certain Thais.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/817911-thailands-economic-outlook-worst-in-40-years/?utm_source=newsletter-20150417-0732&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

Oddly, the one optimistic prediction is this one:

With the exception of tourism sector which is projected to grow 13.7 percent with 28.8 million tourist arrivals

OK , that's 13.7% up on a dismal 2014 result, but surely its heartening for a town that depends so heavily on tourism for it's income ? I guess the skeptics will maintain that many of TAT's figures are completely manufactured anyway - I can only go on what I see on the streets and leave the shiny bums in Bangkok to their projections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Thailand

Tourist arrivals in 2014 totalled 24.7 million, a drop of 6.6% from 2013. Revenues derived from tourism amounted to THB1.13 trillion, down 5.8% from the previous year. Kobkarn Wattanavarangkul, Thailand's Minister of Tourism and Sports, attributed the decline to the political crisis in the first-half of 2014 which dissuaded many potential visitors from visiting Thailand. Tourism officials also pointed to the dramatic fall in the value of the Russian ruble which has damaged the economies of popular Russian destinations such as Phuket and Pattaya