MrWorldwide

All I remember is the grainy photo from Nana, but isnt that the way with so many cases here ? Following up a story just isnt in the DNA of most local reporters - people like Drummond notwithstanding. Usually when a criminal disappears without trace in Australia they find his body in shallow grave a few months later : if Looker is guilty of the crime and the grisly aftermath, lets hope for some natural justice along those lines.

My sister worked at a pre-school for many years after she left nursing, and she said it never ceased to amaze her how quickly things could go south with small kids around water. Had two kids of her own, basically raised my brother and sister when we were kids, backyard swimming pool, but she rarely expressed surprise when the media ran a story about a child drowning.

RIP.

If he'd just had a run in with 3 Thai, then the cops show up, he was, more than likely, still on a adrenalin "rush". That, combined with the alcohol, left him in an "aggressive" frame of mind.

If you read the report, its claimed that he was throwing water whilst getting hammered, then moved on to throwing something solid at one of the Thai youths - clearly the guy shouldn't be allowed near alcohol and he's another brilliant example of what those of us who have a problem with the duration of Songkran in Pattaya are on about. I'm guessing it was the combination of alcohol and throwing water than got him in said frame of mind, but if you cant handle either of those things dont come to Pattaya, period. This is not your average tourist, Russian or otherwise - even with the idiocy around the water throwing, most of the participants to date seem to have refrained from going the biff.

overpriced and overrated so shouldnt be a surprise

I had accident on 3rd April fell down the stairs back ward, ambulance, hospital, eight head stickers, flew out to New Zealand 6th April. So missed it all thank you.

Commiserations - that sounds very nasty but its good that you were cleared to fly so soon after your accident. I went face first down a set of stairs at a cinema complex here last year and I still dont know how I avoided breaking my neck and/or someone else's. Broke my shoulder in 3 places, weeks of pain before I could get a decent night's sleep : still dont know how I would have gone without the Thai girl who was with me at the time. Just climbing into the taxi to go to Pattaya Memorial was an experience I'd prefer to forget - needless to say, the staff at the cinemas completely ignored the entire incident.

Anyone who comes out of a movie while the credits are rolling expecting the house lights to be turned on needs to just stand back and wait till that happens - years of scurrying down stairs without incident, one misstep and you're airborne.

I am doing a lot of business with Centara in Pattaya and they have been fully booked all over Sonkran and they have blocks on rooms for May, June and August.

Not sure how the small hotels are doing but the big hotels look like they can sustain any situation.

Agreed, but this thread is about bars and smaller restaurants, not the fate of the Hilton hotel chain. I dont go near Hard Rock Cafe or anything of that ilk either, but I assume it would take more than a couple of poor high seasons to force them to sell up.

The 'tax scam on arrival' is, I assume, the Customs duties we all pay for imported goods, regardless of the country you live in. If you dont want the recipient to pay the duty, mark your package as a 'gift' - it's still up to Customs as to whether duties (and VAT/GST) will be levied.

None of us like to pay it, but referring to it as a 'scam' when it appears you are looking to scam the destination country out of revenue seems a stretch for mine.

Are crayfish available in Thailand?

I have never seen any here.

I would like to raise some in my pond.

Where can I obtain some live ones, without the lead in them?

I am serious about this.

P.S. What the heck does any of this have to do with Songkran????

Bingo. OP is an obvious troll.

Thanks craig, and I agree that the daylight hours usually arent the best time to gauge numbers - if anything, many of us have complained to Stickman that he's been back in his hotel at midnight then dashed back to BKK to report that Pattaya was dead after the sun went down : I think you need to see a venue at 1am to really get an accurate picture, and I've experienced MiT and Diana many times at that hour. As I said, I need to get some photos - will endeavour to do so over the next few days.

* fwiw, some of the bars on Buakhow and Beach Road do their best trade during the day and are sparsely populated after 7pm, but they are the exceptions IME. I've never quite understood why many of the bars elsewhere even bother opening at 4 or 5pm when they struggle to get any customers for the first 3-4 hours - I guess the girls need time to eat, do their makeup and watch a Thai soap or two.

Since I'm already in this up to my ears, please allow me to dig myself in deeper.

It occurred to me as I sat in Made in Thailand last night that one of the reasons half the town's bars could close without many here noticing is that the number of TVers willing to admit that they regularly frequent the bars seems to be quite small, esp as many try to distance themselves from the stereotype of the boozing sexpat. If you told me a lot of the mobile phone shops were going under due to a lack of customers, my care factor would be zero and I doubt that i would even notice unless it literally left a gaping hole in the shopfronts along Second Road. I go to TukCom rarely, but I'm sure that if I walked into that first floor and it was half-empty, I would notice - I wouldnt shed a tear, but I'd notice and the same applies to the shops on the Third Floor at Central Festival.

Until you actually venture into some of the bigger bar complexes, its not immediately apparent just how ridiculous the oversupply really is. Close one of the big bars on Beach Road and it would stand out like a sore thumb - close 5 smaller bars in one of the big complexes and chances are it wont even register with the majority of the pedestrian traffic on the soi outside the complex. Even if one of the Beach Road bars did go under - and I'm skeptical that will be the case - someone else will almost certainly jump at the chance to get into a prime location : the same doesnt apply to a cookie-cutter bar buried in a complex on Second Road.

This is a photo from inside the Drinking St complex near Dolphin Roundabout - the last time I went down there they charged me 90 baht for a Leo and I was one of the about 20 punters. I'm told that the complex does very good business during Songkran - I'll try and get down there tomorrow to see how accurate that statement is, but it's not hard to see how half this complex could close without many of us even noticing.

Haven't you only been here about five minutes?

Compared to many of the longtimers, yes, and many of those same people would say that Pattaya isn't the 'real' Thailand anyway, but I do live here. If you're referring to the fact that I'm leaving after only 12 months in retirement, it was supposed to be ~6 months but I got sidetracked : such is life. I'll never be an 'old Asia hand' - started far too late in life for that - but I would like to experience something beyond Thailand (good and bad) even if my previous trip to PP was a disaster courtesy of food poisoning. Did I ever see myself living in Thailand 'till the end' ? As a weekend warrior over 18 years, absolutely, particularly during the hours spent in that fracking Departure Lounge at DM/Swampy but that was replaced by a desire to live close enough to visit without necessarily living in the Kingdom.

- 1 for this topic.

I dont have a problem with the OP - it seemed like a simple enough question:

Anyone see yourself here till the end?

That's it - not a single mention of the merits of life in the US vs Thailand. Anyone looking to move on could choose to return home or move to another country - either in the region or elsewhere. It's one thing to say that the UK, Europe and Australia dont have as much to offer those on a fixed income, but unless you happen to be a US citizen that's a moot point. What might have been a discussion of the relative merits of Thailand's 'competition' for retirees seems to have gone straight down a single path. The thread has been almost completely dominated by two TVers who neither live here in Thailand nor profess any desire to live anywhere else in the region. Worst of all, an absolutely massive post from the first page was quoted repeatedly by people who've posted a single line in response - hideous etiquette.

It's easy to get into a to-and-fro when you take a stance, but to bang on about the US for 35 pages takes the cake for mine, particularly when several of the Americans who do live here tried to express an alternate view and were promptly shut down by the aforementioned arbiters of what this thread should be about, neither of whom were the OP. Epic fail.

If I can be allowed to address the actual topic, I'll be leaving Thailand in May - Cambodia for at least 6 months then review my options.

Always have a Plan B just in case life here becomes untenable. Been here for 13 years even though I never intended to stay this long. Can live anywhere but this place seems to have a magical hold on me.

sexpat

Do you ever get sick of being a complete a-h0le ? One line snipers are one of the reasons many who come here simply dont post - give it a rest.

What the frack does this have to do with SONGKRAN specifically ? People eat in Thai seafood restaurants every day of the fracking year.

Try living in hong kong and walking during lunch hour , Thats a lot busier than siam bts every day of the week

I live in Pattaya for a reason - no-one's asking about life in HK. You're there for a reason, and I'm guessing its not your ideal retirement destination.

I hate at Songkraan has become. When will the country grow up?

These kinds of bash the country- comments give people cancer - it's the country's religious tradition - when will you grow up?

If it was 2-3 days starting today, fine, but it isnt - its 9 days of stupidity. First day, I could see the attraction, by the second I was bored with it and by the third completely over it. Whatever relationship Songkran may have to the rites performed by the monks disappeared 3 days in - now it's just an excuse to get drunk in a town where many of us dont need an excuse. On a stinking hot day, minus the ice and the deliberate targeting of motorbike riders, I might be able to see some merit in the water throwing - as it stands, even the lure of an afternoon beer cant compensate for the prospect of having icewater poured down my back for the umpteenth time. It's particularly ironic that many who decry the bars as a boring waste of time and money somehow consider the water throwing to be a worthwhile event - even the 12 year olds have to be sick of the monotony of it by now.

The water comes from tanker trucks and they charge 50 baht to refill each of the large blue containers - I think they're normally garbage bins - strewn all over various Pattaya Sois. Not a bad little earner when they're obviously pulling that water from local catchments during a prolonged drought. We have had rain here in the last fortnight - whether its anywhere near enough to offset the Songkran madness is a question best left to TV's estimates committee. Still, if it puts cash in people's pockets I guess they figure water will eventually fall from the sky between now and November, but Songkran wont be back for another 12 months.

...

What are some good hangout spots for socializing? Are these mostly beer bars or is there an "intellectual" or college district? Thanks for the info!

There is a university in Chonburi and you may find the odd Farang who is on your wavelength, but in the main this is just a provincial Thai town with a sex industry based on the ready availability of poorly educated Thais from the Northeast : hardly what your looking for. Central Bangkok sounds a lot closer to what you're after.

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

However, maybe exactly what YOU'RE looking for.

When one still doesn't understand the difference between "your" and "you're" the obvious inference is that you really are in the correct place for YOUR intellect level.

I've also been known to completely ignore punctuation in my posts, so you'd best tack another ten lashes onto my sentence. Infer what you will, but I'm leaving Pattaya in May - I guess I'll just have to scour the globe seeking out people who speak in monosyllables, watch soap operas and read the tabloid media if they feel the need to read anything at all. Give my regards to your colleagues at Mensa.

There are many things to do in Pattaya now, golf, water parks, beaches, malls, bars, night clubs, expat clubs, etc .... The problem I find is that some of these activities are now very expensive or just have too many people wanting to do the same.

The ladies in Pattaya many if which work in the sex industry are there for the money and not a real relationship. If you have a proper lady guys will still think she is a bar girl and hit on her as if she was. Not a good place for a relationship.

Crime has got to a point that it is out of control and the police are little help and sometimes part of the problem.

I would suggest perhaps living outside of Pattaya in a secure village or condo and having a car. You can then go into Pattaya sometimes but also travel around to other cities. You open up a hole other world having proper transportation. A motorbike is nice but a car is what you need.

I prefer Bangkok as it has everything and it is much easier to find a real girlfriend who works a real job and is not involved in the sex industry. Bangkok is centrally located and you can be in Pattaya or Cha am area in about 2 hours or heading up north to other major cities.

Agree with most of what you've said except the last paragraph - BKK is just too crowded and the traffic is off-the-charts horrendous. Given that a large chunk of them will be travelling to Pattaya for Songkran this weekend, we get to experience a couple of days of gridlock here : a timely reminder of what I'm missing out on most days here in Sin City. Even the Skytrain - a wonderful addition to the city - has become increasingly crowded and I dread anything along the lines of a Friday night trip to the shopping madness around Siam BTS station. I fear that BKK will be another Jakarta by 2050, and that's depressing beyond words. Is this the future the elite really want for their countrymen ?

I'm happy with the tracking USPS have given me for EMS Thailand (Thai Post) consignments, and they tracked an Australian package right through to delivery, but I wasnt too torn up giving my Italian buyer a refund when Thai Post refused to ship - I suspect that anything could have happened to that parcel when it reached Europe. I've seen ads that read 'I wont ship to Italy or India, so don't even bother asking !' and the site I sell through specifically warns about accepting Paypal payments from India. Little wonder they come to BKK and Pattaya on shopping expeditions.

my advice is go back to where you came from pattaya is unlike any other city as it gets bigger it is attracting all the lowlife of the world a modern day SODOM stay and you will be drawn into the web .

You seem to be assuming that's a new development - I dont believe it is, but what I do believe is that people on the margins are becoming more desperate.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/816637-is-pattaya-a-victim-of-its-own-success/

Pattaya was always going to attract people - Thai and foreigner alike - who saw easy money in the pockets of the unwary : what has changed is the supply of said pockets and the number of people who want a slice of the pie. Consider that my dissertation - I'm off to Cambodia in May to experience new people and places.

@VBF I feel much the same at 55, although I'm only in my 12th month in Pattaya, but this town is a Godsend for insomniacs : the Thais just dont go to bed at 10pm (or 1am for that matter). I can go down to the 7/11 out front of my building and there will be a stack of people eating noodles outside - I've seen that right up to 3am - and the karaoke bars across the road literally go all night. Even the street lighting we take for granted here isnt a given in cities like Pnomh Penh and dont even get me started on Vientiane. Spent the longest week of my life there one Monday night in 2008

Perfect world, I'd spend eight months of the year in Japan and the remainder in SEA, but that's a fantasy I'll have to hang onto for my reincarnation as a fabulously wealthy Japanese entrepreneur. Bring it on, Hiro.

Per my other thread, I have had no major problems with my individual account thus far except that I cant work out how to xfer funds from my Thai savings account into my Paypal THB balance:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/817743-paypal-thailand-transferring-baht-from-thai-bank-account/

If you dont do it this way and pay via debit/credit card you incur an extra 323 baht fee : in addition to their other fees that can get ordinary very quickly. One thing that I will give them is that they do refund the fees they charged if you refund a buyer - either in full or in part (percentage of the fees is refunded in that case) - I was surprised by that given their mercenary approach to fees. I have found buyers in the US particularly attracted to any ad where you agree to swallow the Paypal fees but I dont think it would be a good move for a fulltime business - still, if you want to sell something you need to be willing to meet the market. Here are a few examples to give you an idea of what you can expect - I think businesses that do a certain volume each month get a discount on these fees:

Invoice Amt Paypal Fees

550AUD 24.50USD

750USD 33.30USD

1000USD 44.30USD

1000AUD 44.30AUD

Add the expense of shipping from Thailand to the US, Europe and Oz and I'm glad i dont have to rely on this for a living, particularly with some of the loss leaders on EBay and Amazon. EMS managed to break the $750 pair of headphones - luckily the manufacturer seems to be willing to ship my buyer the replacement parts and the design means it shouldnt be an issue - and refused to ship another ~300USD order to Italy : I guess anyone doing it for a living would just take these things in their stride but it ticked me off, even if they did ship the 1K orders for less than 2K baht. None of the above is going to break me even if I get into a dispute, but at this stage I wont be able to collect any of it until the 27th of this month - add another week for it to reach my bank account and you wouldnt want to be relying on Paypal to make rent in any given month. They do have an 'established seller' scheme where you can get your money more quickly - you need at least 5 uncontested sales, a minimum of 100USD in total and be a seller for at least 60 days from the first sale : woohoo

As stated elsewhere, the key to Paypal is being able to buy something else with the currencies you have - conversions are always in Paypal's favor at a woeful exchange rate. Now that you can book hotels using PP it's a lot more attractive for me and my main hobby is dominated by the greenback.

Good luck.

(just a note to the board's mathemagicians - I realise the fees represent a percentage, but that changes when someone pays with a credit or debit card and that's why I've posted the actual amounts. Its all spelt out on the site, but I couldnt find concrete fee examples from anyone

The masturbating robot who pulled himself to pieces ??

When I look at the bevy of beauties lounging around in Coconut Bar, I am very thankful that my left arm still works after I broke my shoulder in 3 places last year. A traumatic injury, no question, but it could have been so much worse.

Thankfully that didnt happen, but they rejected the package because one of the electronic components has a battery in it - I knew they didnt like alkaline or lead acid batteries but I naively thought a rechargeable NIMH in a completely sealed case would be OK. DHL will ship it, but I'm not going to pay their exorbitant prices for a 310USD sale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel–metal_hydride_battery

Soi 13/2 was surprisingly dry bar a few kids throwing water at one another - guess my intel must have been wrong or perhaps it was just too early in the day for the serious water fights in a soi that has a variety of non-bar businesses.

And the hits keep coming - they sent a package destined for Italy back to Pattaya meaning I'm going to have to do the one thing I have no interest in doing during Songkran - catch a motosai taxi down Soi Post Office, one of the worst sois for water throwing. Fan-freakin-tastc.