Well I did venture out to Bangla last night to catch up with some friends at the Blue Beach Restaurant and Café, and although it was not anywhere near crowded/full, it still has a very nice atmosphere to it and the food is good and the staff are great, so couldn't want more really. Oh, and the guitarist Moody was playing and that added to the atmosphere and joviality as he is a very accomplished musician. The small group I was with decided to hit a couple of bars in Bangla and I followed suit even though I don't drink beer these days and anyway after a few glasses of wine at the restaurant, I was getting near my limit, although no one had to twist my arm to visit the bars and whilst they visited the Kangaroo Bar, I popped along to the Black Horse bar which has some people in it whom I know, so it was good to sit down and have a chat. Whilst I was doing that I was able to observe the people milling about in Bangla and walking up and down, without too many of them popping into the bars, despite the bar girls encouraging them to do so, and one Thai guy whom I'd known for years pointed out to me that the bars were never full these days because there were so many "Arabs" in amongst the potential customers and when I paid attention to this, I realised that a great proportion of the ever moving crowd of potential customers were in fact Arabs or of that nature – – I also noticed that quite markedly so when I wandered home via Soi Sansabai and saw it was full of even more Arabic style restaurants. The fact is this long time Thai guy friend actually said it was the Arabs and the Indians who were clogging Bangla up and not spending any money, but then again that doesn't surprise me as it has been moving this way for a few years now. Nothing exciting happened, although when I walked past my old stomping ground of Red Hot (nightclub) I was quite shocked to see no more than a couple of handfuls of customers watching the band, and in fact the band has swollen so much that there were almost as many people on the stage as there were in the audience, which was a sad state of affairs for a place which used to be absolutely "rocking" (at least when I was singing there!). Overall an uneventful night out but one that I decided I should take because of a recent suicide in my close Thai family and I needed to get my head around why a 34 year old happily married young man would decide to hang himself, so being out of my condo and in amongst others I thought might help, and it did. Finally, on the point made by @Priorexpat I have to agree that the "quality" of the girls and bar girls in Bangla/Patong has fallen off quite markedly, so having had a steady girlfriend for quite a few years, I didn't need to avail myself of their services.
