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HugoFastor

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  1. In the late nineties a friend of mine would check in to The Atlanta early in the day, either on a Friday or Saturday, and then often bring girls back there with him in the evenings. Never a problem as far as I know. Not sure if he was charged a joiner fee or not. There was also The Golden Gate hotel on Soi 2, in the same area of The Atlanta, not sure what it was like though. The Manhattan Hotel I mentioned in a previous post was actually on Suk Soi 13. Similar location as The Miami Hotel. Gone now though. There is a new 3-star hotel now on Suk Soi 15 called Hotel Manhattan. Unrelated I assume. The other 2-star hotel I was thinking of earlier was the Malaysia Hotel (not the Asia Hotel) on Soi Ngam Duplhi. Although, not in the Sukhumvit area, I think it had a lot of girls hanging out in and around the lobby and the coffee shop of the hotel, kind of like the Nana Hotel had back in the day. So it was a bit of a scene at that time and yet the hotel is still there today.
  2. It was either a Nokia 2110 or one of the various other Nokia models that looked very similar at the time. Nice big screen. Was actually a bit smaller in width (possibly height too) than many of the larger smartphones around these days. Fit nicely in either my back or front pocket. My company must have paid over 25,000 Baht for it at the time. I had a Motorola brick phone almost 10 years prior to that.
  3. Someone mentioned cell phones earlier, I remember the company I was working for gave me a cell phone to use in 1996. That was my first one in Bangkok. They had been around for at least 5-6 years already at that time I think. We also had internet and email access already in 96'
  4. I stayed not far from WS at that time. There were some good places around the area to eat. An excellent Thai restaurant on Soi 22 around the corner called Rahn Derm. Also a northern Thai place a few shops down from it called Ging Glao. And then you had that New Orleans place, which was popular, I think I went once and wasn't particularly overwhelmed. The WS movie theatre was a good value though. Saw a number of films there, before it turned into a cabaret show venue. All the beer bars in there looked pretty tired though. Never ventured into to any of them. There were many better options at the time.
  5. A house on Soi 11? Still to this day? Don't recall ever seeing one. 30 years ago a friend of mine used to stay there at the Grand President in a serviced apartment. I would go down there to meet him. Wasn't much on that Soi back then in the way of restaurants or bars. Only a few. There was mainly an Italian place I think and The Federal Hotel coffee shop. Living there now must be a wasteland of noise at night though.
  6. Yes, by 2000, the whole scene changed. Patpong started entering into the death throes era. Cowboy and Nana had become cliched and more frequented by Japanese tourists. The club scene in Suk Soi 11 had emerged. Thermae had also become something mainly for the Japanese. Bossy and Spicy out by National Stadium area became the new after hours replacements for expats. And fewer and fewer local expats, the ones who weren't regional expat tourists, had abandoned most of the old haunts.
  7. My memory is a bit foggy, but I think there were even a few more hotels in this genre: The Tai-Pan, The Asia (Soi Ngam Duphli I think), The White Orchid, and I think there was also one on Petchaburi Road close to the Sukhumvit Soi 3 intersection, but the name of that one evades me now. Maybe someone else with a better memory can help to fill in the blanks and correct any errors I made. In one of my previous posts, I also accidentally referred to the Atlanta as the Atlantic. Was there also one called The Atlantic somewhere too?
  8. Interesting point and makes more sense why Trink's column was eventually shuttered in 2003. Towards the late nineties, that whole segment of the Bangkok nightlife scene, which had existed since the seventies, had perished. A different style of Bangkok nightlife emerged, away from all the go-go bars, the small expat/British style pubs, and the vibrant Patpong late night disco and bar scene was gone too. So the things that Trink covered, and Stickman did for that matter, were basically more of just a memory by the time the year 2000 rolled in. End of an era really.
  9. Thanks, someone mentioned earlier, it was called Bobby's Arms.
  10. I'm glad that you mentioned Crutchley. This triggered my memory of some of the other proper writers who used to write on various different subjects about Thailand 25-30 years ago. I actually had a list at one time of books I had read back then, and that I liked, but I can't find the list now. However, just going from memory, some of the proper writers that I can still recall are listed below. There were of course, many others, probably another couple dozen in fact. Anyway, if you have any others that you feel are notable and worth mentioning then please do. Pico Iyer Collin Piprell Jerry Hopkins John Burdett Philip Cornwel-Smith William Warren Kenneth Champeon
  11. I remember when someone told me his column was ending or had ended around the time it stopped being published. I personally wouldn't have noticed either way because I wasn't a reader, but, if I recall correctly, the snarky jibes at the time were that he wasn't fired, but that he was being shuffled off to the rubber room where he could continue his writings in peace. I guess the notion was that towards the end of his reign at BP that he was losing touch, that his writings were becoming a bit incoherent, and to the point they no longer offered much utility. I don't know, because I never really read his stuff much anyway, so maybe this is anecdotal. But the fact that he continued doing some book reviews for BP, for a few more years after his column was deprecated, means he was seemingly still able to produce some useful content.
  12. Ah, cheers. The bottles hanging in Mizu's restaurant were Chianti I believe, an Italian red wine. Not sure if he sold it there or not. Chianti bottles these days are no longer packaged in those straw woven baskets though.
  13. Perhaps the Patpong area can't easily be raised and redeveloped into a shopping mall because of the issue that Patpong 1 Road is a city street and property of the government. Speaking of the old days of Patpong, although PP wasn't a place I spent that much time at, does anyone remember the old Mizu's Sarika Steak House owned by Akio Masakari? It was probably the oldest of any of the venues in Patong 1 and I believe it was the oldest independent non-Thai restaurant in the country, until it eventually closed down. I think Akio opened his first location on Patpong 1 in 1954, and, by the mid to late sixties moved his deeper place inside Patpong 1 about 1/3 of the way down from the Suriwong end. Walking through the doorway of that place was like going through a time warp, even 30 years ago. I vividly remember the sticky/greasy red checkered tablecloths, the sizzling Sarika Steaks for under 200 Baht, and old Akio quietly sitting at the register with a cigarette permanently fastened to his lips. And then he had that large gaggle of empty bottles of some alcoholic beverage hanging behind the counter for decoration. After coming inside from the blistering heat and nigh time noise from Patpong itself, and into that cool, quiet place, it was a feeling of being instantly being transcended from a rock concert into an oasis of quiet and calm. I never did figure out what those old bottles were though hanging above and behind the counter? Old Japanese sake bottles perhaps? I also wonder if Trink regularly ate there too? I think Mizu's finally closed down in March 2019 after about a 60 year run. Akio was possibly in his nineties by then.
  14. Was there also a popular watering on PP2 that could only be reached by entering through the carpark above Foodland supermarket?
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