One Pattaya
Fun Town’s most vibrant
20 Baht
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21 www.pattayaone.net
in pattaya now... watch this space! A Dogged Persistence
Police Helmet Clampdown By Staff Writers Local police stations recently put up signs around the city indicating they were intending to take a stronger approach to road safety. In particular, they intended to launch a blitz on the wearing
of safety helmets by motorbike riders and passengers in an attempt to have 100 percent compliance throughout the city. It seems that apart from police officers, security guards, police volunteers, tourist police assistants, uniformed officials of any
roads could be reduced by people wearing proper safety helmets. The mounting costs of Thailand’s medical care for those who blatantlyflout the law and don’t, or won’t, wear helmets has been a big contributing factor in this new clampdown. Unfortunately, as ever in Fun Town, our reporters have found the law is being selectively
Continues on page 2
>
A Dogged Persistence
description, schoolchildren, children and anyone else who isn’t a foreigner, the local constabulary have been admirably assiduous in clamping down across the board on the social evils of not wearing a motorbike helmet in Fun Town. Pattaya One supports a total clampdown, given the personal and economic benefits it would bring to the Kingdom if the number of deaths and injuries on Thailand’s
02 Pattaya One
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
A Dogged Persistence
What Law? Scofflaw!
From page one applied. In recent days, Pattaya One reporters have observed a wide variety of non-helmet wearing lawbreakers, and many of them wear official uniforms and should know better. It is claimed in some quarters that police officers are exempt from this law, as if by donning a tight brown uniform and plonking a soft peak cap on their melons they are turned into something other than human and an accident in which their head hits the tarmac will have no ill-effects. It’s not usually acceptable in a society ostensibly operating under the rule of law, that the people charged with upholding that law are exempt from its provisions. Sounds like yet another barstool urban myth. Further, one of our reporters recently observed a (perhaps unofficial) two-man police checkpoint operating at midnight opposite Marine Plaza, where the only nonhelmet wearers who were stopped and fined were tourists, especially Arabs. Thai motorcyclists, who were also not wearing helmets, were allowed to drive past without a problem, even when there were two or three of them on one motorcycle. Such selective application of the laws of the road are bound to
aggrieve people, and so it was at the Marine Plaza checkpoint recently, when Arabs complained loudly as helmetless Thais whizzed past on their motorbikes. We have also watched as many students, including children too young to be in control of a motorbike, arriving at, and leaving, schools and colleges without bothering to wear helmets. Surely if the intention of the clampdown is to reduce the costs to the Thai medical system of treating injured motorcyclists, and to reduce the appalling death toll of Thais on the roads, it would be better for the police to concentrate their efforts outside schools and colleges and night markets, instead of almost exclusively against tourists in the centre of Pattaya, as these people generally have medical insurance and will anyway depart for their own country in a week or two (even if it is in a box). However the law is applied, even we think the rigorous enforcement of the helmet law should stop at animals, having seen a pug sweating it out near Soi Buakhow market recently. When we asked for an interview, the mutt raised his helmet-enclosed head and sounded as if he was aying he was feeling ‘ruff ruff’.
Goodthaigirl.com Online Dating Service Free Chat/Email in 35 Languages! Automatic Translator Holiday and Marriage Blogs Plus Dozens of Extra Features!
www.Goodthaigirl.com
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
Pattaya One 03
Shocking Sights on Not quite up the creek without a paddle Walking Street
Walking Street, previously known as a haunt for an entirely different kind of meat emporia, came of age recently when a McDonalds opened its doors – well, its window - down there. As such, it becomes the first global brand to endorse the New Pattaya Vision, by emblazoning its logo on Walking Street. We at Pattaya One wonder when we will see the first (legitimate) Prada or Louis Vuitton store there. Surely these luxury brand names can’t be far behind the next Seven Eleven to open to cater to the retail
A sign of the (New) Times booze-buying, street-strolling, impecunious tourists increasingly loitering with no intent on that fine thoroughfare.
Rogue police volunteers go into extortion business
It has been suggested that rogue Pattaya police volunteers have been, and are, setting up their own checkpoints around the city and taking cash in exchange for alleged motoring offences without any regular police officers being present. Pattaya One television secretly filmed one such checkpoint and positively identified the supposed officers as Pattaya police volunteers. Our journalists received complaints from residents in Soi Bongkot in South Pattaya who were angered at these apparently illegal checkpoints. They asked us to secretly film one and send our footage to the Pattaya Police Chief.
The original filming took place in the early hours of a Monday morning and it was confirmed no uniformed police officers were present. The volunteers, all wearing shirts with the words ‘Police’ (in English) on them, and carrying two-way radios, even conducted vehicle searches without police authorization. We urge motorists to check the credentials of anyone stationed at a checkpoint and always ask to see the uniformed police officer in charge of the scene, otherwise you are not required to comply with the volunteers requests and are within your rights to leave the scene.
In the early hours of a weekday morning police from the Dongtan sub-station as well as rescue volunteers were called to the scene of a fatal road accident which had taken the life of a Thai female. The accident had occurred near a u-turn on Sukhumvit Road, not far from the entrance to Soi Greenway. At the scene, police and volunteers were confronted with a severely damaged pick-up truck, whose driver had performed the traditional cultural act of felling the scene, as well as a wrecked motorbike and the body of a Thai female lying in the central reservation shrubbery. She was not carrying any identification and officers surmised
she was aged between 20 and 25 years old. Witnesses said the dead woman had asked for directions to a location north of Soi Greenway. She had then noticed a u-turn in the road approximately 100 metres to the right and proceeded to ride her motorbike out onto Sukhumvit Road and headed against the on-coming traffic. The pick-up was travelling at high speed and it appears the driver didn’t expect a woman on a motorbike would be crossing in front of him coming from the left hand side of the street and going the wrong way, even though this is Thailand and this kind of activity is as common as a dog with fleas.
Poor driving leads to fatal accident
An unknown foreign man was found up a tree one early morning, and not surprisingly there was serious concern over his safety and mental state. Police and volunteers were called to the tree located within a village in Soi Chayapreuk in Jomtien and spent almost one hour negotiating with the man who refused to give his name or nationality. They soon decided he wasn’t a drunk who had mistaken the tree for his hotel. Police guessed the man was aged between 55 and 60 and appeared to be carrying a bag of clothes and was in a condition consistent with
someone who may be living on the streets. Eventually the man climbed down from the tree and appeared oblivious to the police presence as he calmly sat on the ground and lit a cigarette. For his own safety he was escorted to Dongtan Police SubStation on Jomtien Beach where he spent the rest of the night before being released without any further action. For some strange reason the police decided not to find who the man was and why he decided to climb the tree. Nor did they bother asking for a passport with a valid visa inside.
A 50 year old Russian tourist was caught-up in an alleged theft by two transsexuals on Pattaya Beach Road late one night. Both suspects had been caught and taken to Pattaya police station along with the victim of the reported theft, Mr. Petr Chernov. He explained that he was walking past the Royal Garden Plaza shopping mall when the two suspects
came up close to him and one of them proceeded to steal Mr. Chernov’s wallet, which contained 1,000 baht in cash. The original thief then passed the wallet to the second suspect, who attempted to escape. Luckily police volunteers were close-by and were able to assist in apprehending the two transsexuals. The pair confessed to the theft at the police station and were charged.
Ladyboys light finger Russian’s wallet
SUBSCRIBE to Pattaya One online for FREE! If you would like to make certain of receiving YOUR copy of Pattaya One, all you need to do is go to the website: www.pattayaone.net, enter your name and email address for FREE. Every time a new issue of Pattaya One comes out you will receive an email with a PDF attached. Just download the PDF and you have a permanent copy of Pattaya One.
04 Pattaya One
Fun Town’s most vibrant
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Intrepid Sailor lays up in Pattaya Round-the-World in a not quite leaky boat South African-born sailor Alan de la Hunt-Hilton is a member of a rare breed. The 62-year-old is currently about halfway into an essentially solo round-the-world sailing trip aboard his 48-foot yacht, and fetched up in Pattaya Bay in late June with the intention of spending some time in Thailand to break his lengthy trek. For a seaside resort, it’s perhaps a little surprising Pattaya doesn’t see more people of the kind who ‘mess about in boats’ washing up on our fair shores. And it has nothing to do with Pattaya’s reputation abroad. In fact, as Alan stated, his reason for the stopover here is that Pattaya boasts, “the only marina in the Gulf of Thailand which can take a deep-keeled sailing boat out of the water for repairs.” For the technically minded, Alan’s boat is a Beneteau 473 Oceanis Commodore, launched in 2006. Called ‘Ocean Air’ she has all electric winches, three electric heads (toilets) and holding tanks, a 100-hp diesel engine with a 300hour capacity, a built-in generator and air-conditioning units in all three double cabins. Maybe thirty, forty or certainly fifty years ago, Alan’s single-handed sailing effort would have been avidly followed by a hungry news media and armchair swabbies. Nowadays, as Alan noted, “There are hundreds of people out there sailing long distances all over and around the world.” The feat has become about as intriguing as climbing Mount Everest. Yet the reality remains that sailing around the world solo in a small vessel is still an amazing effort; just as climbing Mount Everest remains a singularly spectacular achievement. Alan’s love affair with boats and sailing began in landlocked Johannesburg, South Africa’s financial capital. “I taught myself how to sail
when I was quite young and used to go sailing on a lake in Johannesburg,” he said. He left South Africa in the early 1980s when it looked as though that benighted country would dissolve into civil war. After a brief period in the United States he settled in Britain, living and working in London. Here he continued to further his love of sailing. “I built my own boat, made of plywood and staples. It was a 30foot ‘throwaway’ boat. In 1990 I decided to take it for a trip into the Mediterranean with a girl. We finished up being away for two years,” Alan recounted. “I sailed down to Gibraltar, then to the Canary islands and Cape Verde before following the wind out into the Caribbean. The boat couldn’t go into the wind, so I had to follow the trade winds.” For the modern sailor Alan says, “GPS positioning systems makes sailing a lot safer.” This round-the-world trip began in Spain in September 2010. After travelling to Gibraltar it was then out to the Madeiras, Canaries, Cape Verde, Trinidad, Barbados, St Martens, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Panama.
“It took me four weeks to get through Panama. I had to obtain an agent to organise all the formalities and get a booking to go through the canal. It cost about US$2,000 [60,000 baht],” said Alan. Once out into the Pacific Ocean he decided to head straight across, travelling almost 10,000 kilometres to Kiribati. He stopped only once, at Fanning Island. “I had an Austrian girl who accompanied me. I met her while I was waiting in Panama. She didn’t want to fly, so came with me. The journey took six weeks.” Alan continued, “We eventually went a further 1,600 kilometres to Tarawa [capital of Kiribati] where the girl flew on to Fiji and I decided to sail south through the Solomon Islands and onto Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea because I needed to pick up provisions and make some repairs.” Alan said the swells in the Pacific are huge at times. “You can hear the wind coming. It sounds like a train and then the waves are upon you.” Sleep is a luxury. “Even when you are asleep, you are half awake. And when you’re awake, you’re half asleep.” Alan said most of the time he has the boat on autopilot. When he knows he is entering the shipping lanes he turns on the radar as an added precaution. For Alan, and others, the biggest concern is pirates. Not the ‘yo ho ho, 16 men on a dead man’s chest’ types with names like Blackbeard and Captain Kidd but the local fishermen-turned-opportunists who prey on single vessels as they pass close to their isolated island homes. While piracy at the Horn of Africa has the attention of the world, it is no less dangerous for individual sailors to traverse the sea lanes around the southern Philippines, some of the islands
stretching the length of the Arafura and Timor Seas in Indonesia and the Malacca Straits, which separate Malaysia and Indonesia. After leaving Port Moresby he headed west across the Torres Strait and into the Arafura and Timor Sea’s. To avoid potential trouble, “I stayed as far offshore as possible and passed many islands at night, without showing navigation lights.” Alan later turned north, passed Bali and Singapore without stopping, before making landfall at Songkhla in southern Thailand, 26 days after leaving Papua New Guinea. From here he discovered Pattaya was the only place in the Gulf of Thailand capable of servicing his boat by taking it out of the water and removing barnacles. When he departs Pattaya, Alan will travel to Koh Chang to hook up with a woman who is meeting him there from Australia. After that, he said, “I might go to Cambodia or Vietnam before heading west again through the Indian Ocean and through the Red Sea, Suez Canal and back to Britain.” [Anyone interested in following Alan on his travels, just go to his website: www.cuhilton.com]
By Duncan Stearn
Alan.-Look.-No-hands-neededto-steer-this-thing
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Pattaya One 05
Fun Town’s most vibrant
Pete’s Peregrinations The Frantic Elevators of Pattaya
By Peter Lloyd
Over the past year Pattaya has attracted considerable adverse publicity for itself and its poorly maintained buildings, plant and equipment by the alarming speed at which some elevators have plummeted to the ground floor, with people inside them. Fortunately there have been no deaths so far, but it makes you wonder what element of common expenses in older condos, and also older hotels, goes into the proper maintenance of elevators, which are expensive items to replace. When they aren’t plummeting earthbound, they seem to be getting stuck a lot, with people panicking to get out. Having once been stuck in a shoebox-sized elevator in the Majestic Condominium in pitch darkness for 15 minutes, I can appreciate the problems some people have when it happens to them. Recently a poor woman was trapped in an elevator in an apartment complex in Pattaya. She had little air, began to panic and had to
So good they named a floor after us. be taken to hospital when rescued. The same thing happened to a Pattaya Today journalist a couple of months ago. She was stuck in a condo elevator, but (unlike me) she used her brains, and called a reporter friend at a TV company.
When the technician arrived to free her he was shocked to find himself at the centre of a Pattaya media frenzy. Also, earlier this year, Pattaya had more dubious publicity when 11 Thammasat University students
became trapped in a hotel elevator in South Pattaya, although it sounded like this was (made out to be) their own fault for all cramming in at the same time. The worst Pattaya elevator accident in the past year was when a number of schoolchildren and their teachers were injured when an elevator in a central Pattaya hotel plummeted six floors to the ground. The hotel maintained it was serviced properly, and experts were at a loss to understand, given modern-day technology, how the lift had crashed at all. In this instance, although some people had broken bones, it was very lucky there were no fatalities, as a fall of six floors is certainly life-threatening. And finally, whilst not quite the same circumstances as above, but again more bad news for Pattaya and elevator accidents in the past year, there was a serious injury done to a 16 year-old waiter who had his head stuck in an appropriately-named dumb waiter (a food elevator) in a seafood restaurant a few months back. How that accident happened, who knows, but I suspect his head was somewhere it shouldn’t have been to begin with, which is par for the course.
Same same but different tourists The recent arrest by Pattaya police of an Algerian ATM scammer, alleged to be behind at least an 80 million baht fraud, was a great result. I noted the thief had come to Pattaya from Phuket, yet another export from that crime-riddled island to wash up on Pattaya’s innocent shores. The Pattaya police also recently collared two Russians wanted in their own country on money-laundering charges totalling US$25 million (1 billion baht). These two arrests for serious crimes had me thinking that whatever Thailand and Pattaya do to attract new, high-end tourists from new markets and from different parts of the world, the net result seems to always be the same. It is no surprise that as the old tourists and longtime residents from Europe, the US and Australia are squeezed out by visa shake-ups, in come the Indians, Iranians, Arabs, Africans and, in massive numbers, the Russians, to replace them.
Crime Capital Central There are always some very bad apples in Thailand’s tourist harvest, wherever they come from, and Pattaya usually ends up with more than its fair share. This is exemplified by the steady stream of drug busts at Bangkok
airport, where Iranians, Arabs, Indians and Africans are being arrested by the day. Iranians are generally nicked for smuggling the drug ‘Ice”, whereas Indians prefer smuggling ketamine, with one smuggler recently
Contact me at pattayaonepete@gmail.com
caught with $2,000,000 (80 million baht) worth of the stuff. We also had the recent case of an Iranian caught in Pattaya, who had a methamphetamine laboratory in his condo in Bangkok, and a Nigerian with drugs stuffed up his bum, also caught in Pattaya. Add to those numbers the Russians regularly arrested in Bangkok and Pattaya on international warrants for drug crimes in Russia, and you can see that whatever Thailand and Pattaya do to bring in posher tourists, they seem to end up with more than their fair share of criminals. I wonder if Thailand may be perceived around the world as a soft touch and a place where you can pay to get out of trouble, or to get bail for even heinous crimes, after which you can do a bunk without ever having to face the courts in Thailand. This might make it an attractive destination for many people bent on committing international crime.
06 Pattaya One
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
Letters to the Editor If you would like to voice your opinion in print, please send us your thoughts and ideas by email to: editor@pattayaone.net Letters may be edited to improve clarity and spelling.
When in Rome…or Pattaya Sir, I have lived here for eight years and this low season I have seen the worst driving on the roads of Pattaya that I have ever seen. And when I have got a glimpse of the driver, thinking they are just lousy Thai drivers, I have found they are FARANG. And they have driven worse than anyone I have seen on the road in many years. Do farang adopt Thai driving rules, or do these ignorant, dangerous wankers also drive
Dodgy copper Sir, I read on your website that there had been illegal police checkpoints in Pattaya run by non-police. How do I know if they are proper checkpoints or not, and what do I do if I think they aren’t? Just drive off? Thanks, Phil Resident in Pattaya. First of all, 99.9999% of checkpoints are operated by real police persons. Second, although you’re a foreigner, if you are in a motor vehicle it’s unlikely you’ll be pulled over, unless you’ve got a headlight out (if travelling at night), or your number plate is missing (even then, you probably won’t be pulled up), or you’ve done something to attract attention. If you’re on a motorbike of course, you’re fair game for the real uniforms as well as the counterfeit types. Basically, if you’ve done nothing wrong and all your licences and registration details are correct then if they try to stitch you up in some financial way then insist on going to the local station.
Bangkok Condo for Rent Newly renovated, fully furnished 68-sqm one-bedroom split level, True Visions Gold, internet. Ruam Rudee soi 2, Bangkok, 4-min walk to All Seasons Place, 8-min walk to Ploenchit BTS station. 23,000 baht per month. call 081 682 4488
like that in their own countries, like in Southern Europe and France? Yours sincerely, Andy, UK Unfortunately, there are a lot of foreigners who drive really badly here; not just the odd mistake, of which we are all guilty, but with quite blatant disregard for anything resembling road rules. They should know better and therefore their actions are arguably worse
than the locals, most of whom grew up in small Issan villages where the pace of life is somnolent in the extreme and the need to be alert is not great. From empiric evidence it appears the longer a foreigner stays in Pattaya, the worse his/her driving becomes. They see how the locals drive or ride, and simply think ‘that’s what you have to do’ when, in fact, the road rules are just as strict here as in most other developed nations. It’s just enforcement tends to leave a lot to be desired.
Alleged risk to marine and human safety Sir, The severely damaged buoys washing up on Jomtien beach are a clear example of what can happen when a great idea falters with its practical execution. The buoys have undoubtedly saved at least several lives from injury or death since they were installed. But, approximately a year after being installed, the white and red iridescent buoys are now posing a danger to the very swimmers they were meant to protect. Most are now infested with razor-sharp barnacles which pose a serious threat to swimmers who either reach out to hang onto the buoys or a hit by them if they swim too close and wave action causes them to drift. Because the wave, current and swell patterns at Jomtien Beach are more severe than at Pattaya Beach, the quantity of buoys there which have completely broken down structurally are much greater, but of course the colour fading and crystallization of the plastic structure under UV is the same in all locations. There appears to be a major design fault in this type of buoy in that it has a hole at each end to allow the large heavy duty line to pass
through, knotted on both sides of the buoy to keep space between them, which allows constant friction and impact to the buoy but also allowing seawater to enter the interior. This is lined with a buoyancy foam which then becomes saturated and breaks down. When the main plastic body fractures, this foam lining is released and becomes a major environmental problem. The Pollution Solution Group suggests the only course of action is to totally replace all the buoys. There is a buoy on the market today with a stainless steel O-ring through which a line can be run. This buoy is less expensive than the current items. When it comes to our ocean, sea life and beaches, cost should not be a factor. Yours sincerely, Gerry Rasmus
The buoys have been busted, again
A barnacle encrusted buoy
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
Pattaya One 07
08 Pattaya One
Fun Town’s most vibrant
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
Pattaya One 09
10 Pattaya One
Fun Town’s most vibrant
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Pattaya One 11
Fun Town’s most vibrant
THE
FRUGAL GOURMAND
JOMTIEN TWOFER Tapas are the name for a diverse range of appetizers or snacks, often combined to make a meal, originating in Spain, but now popular all over the world. The recently opened East Tapas Lounge, located on the site of the former Pagoda Restaurant, on the middle soi of Jomtien Complex, offers a big selection of tapas as well as a nice variety of main courses. There’s al fresco seating on an attractive terrace, with waterfall; and indoor, air-conditioned seating in an elegantly appointed dining room. Tapas are 60 baht each, or five for 250 baht. A glass of red or white house wine is a reasonable 90 baht. My friend chose the ‘chef menu,’ which consisted of Gazpacho (cold tomato soup), which he said was delicious; followed by two tapas (roast pork and marinated salmon); followed by sorbet to cleanse the palate; pan-fried lemon chicken
Seafood Paella at East Tapas Lounge 2 breast accompanied by fried potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli and topped off with vanilla cream and chocolate mousse. All this was just 380 baht. I ordered from the a la carte menu and began with two tapas: Mozzarella with tomato and roast beef tarta (tartar sauce). They were both quite tasty, but left room for my main course. Although, paella for two is offered for 480 baht, it was no problem ordering a single portion at 240. I chose the seafood paella, which was a large portion of saffron rice topped with lots of shrimp, squid, mussels and fish,
and accompanied by vegetables; no complaints here. With two glasses of wine and a bottle of soda water, my bill came to 590 baht. There are also lots of cold and hot appetizers, mains and Thai food to choose from on the menu. East Tapas Lounge is definitely worth a visit. They’re open nightly for dinner. If you’re in the mood for delicious, reasonably-priced Italian cuisine, do try Da Claudio, which is almost next door to the East Tapas Lounge. The attractively decorated restaurant serves a variety of Italian dishes as well as an extensive choice of Thai food. On
the evening we visited, they were offering two ‘promotions of the week,’ which consisted of wine, mixed salad or bruschetta, chicken filet steak with mashed potatoes and ice cream or coffee; all for 310 baht. I chose the other promotion which offered wine, salad, spaghetti Bolognese and ice cream or coffee at 280. The Bolognese sauce contained a generous amount of beef and was very flavorsome. Service is excellent; and the waitress provided fresh ground pepper and freshly grated cheese with the meal. My Thai friend ordered an enjoyable spaghetti with prawn ‘spicy Thai style,’ at 180 baht. I topped off my meal with delicious, filter coffee and my friend indulged in Irish coffee, which was creamy on top and prepared perfectly. Da Claudio features a large menu with many reasonablypriced choices. Mains start at under 200 baht (pasta) and go up to around 400 baht for Tiger prawns. They offer baked rabbit with wine sauce at 340 baht. Da Claudio is open for dinner Monday through Friday. (They’re closed Saturday and Sunday during low season.)
If you have any favorite restaurants you’d like included; or like your restaurant reviewed, email: FrugalGourmand@Pattayaone.net
Fishing without a line Out in the wilds of Issan and other parts of the Thai countryside the art of angling is played out in a very different fashion to that usually experienced in many other parts of the world. Fishing in the inland takes place not only in rivers and streams but also on the side of the roads after heavy rains and especially in-between the paddy berms and canals dug alongside many farms. Fish seem capable of breeding and multiplying almost anywhere and the following pictures were taken from a canal dug alongside a
Story & photos by Duncan Stearn
farming residence in the province of Buriram. The first step is to get slimy and muddy by forming a dam to trap the fish in one part of the canal. Once the barrier is formed it’s necessary to start draining the water, thus denying the fish room to move. Plastic buckets are all that is required. As the canal is drained so the fish are reduced to floundering in just centimetres of water and thus can be picked up by hand, no matter how flat their heads.
Marshalling the implements of capture
Fish in a bucket, also known as a seafood basket
12 Pattaya One
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
Kris & Noi’s
Thailand. Something happening to one person can set off several pages about thieving, racist or stupid Thais, and of course the superiority of western people. I’ve very rarely met people like them, so they are a minority, but I cannot understand how, if they hate this place so much, why did they come here and why do they stay? Reliant Robin
Private
Do you have a question about customs or culture, or perhaps just a general comment on life in Thailand? Email Kris & Noi at: knprivateposts@gmail.com Baht Blues Despite the poor exchange rate and increase in cost of living, I can still live reasonably well with my Thai wife and our daughter, and certainly better than in my home country. But I will be unable to reach the pension/bank deposit combination of 800,000 baht required to renew my retirement visa, or the 400,000 in the bank for a marriage visa, so although I can afford to live here, I cannot afford my visa to live here! I’ve heard of expats looking elsewhere in the region; perhaps the new government will try to keep the expats here, as they bring money into the country, by reducing the
800,000 requirement? Hopeful Harry Some countries encourage expat retirement settlement, as they welcome the money they bring in. Unfortunately Thailand seems interested only in short-stay tourists despite expat retirees bringing a fair amount of money into the country. Many expats are like you, able to live comfortably but finding difficulty in coming up with the necessary dosh if pension/savings income isn’t enough. Don’t expect much from the new government— not certain, but wasn’t it them who doubled the ante when they were in power under their original name?
The urban myth that Pattaya beach is dirty I was as overjoyed as the next beach-avoider when I saw the title of this topic on the teakdoor website recently. It all started with a non-Pattaya resident poster called Socal, who boldly advanced the argument Pattaya’s beaches are actually clean, using some internet-garnered scientific cut and paste resources and ending with the comment: The beach is not dirty, it is safe to swim in, and every rumor you hear out there is bullsh*t. Of course, to many who live in Pattaya, it wasn’t bull effluent that concerned them, but that of a human kind, and the poster received a blast from some thoughtful, intelligent and wellinformed posters on the subject of the treatment of waste in our fair city. And some plain abusive ones too. Mind you the poster didn’t help himself or his argument when he posted a nice photograph of JOMTIEN beach and its cleaner sea, instead of Pattaya Beach, as a way of advancing his argument about the cleanliness of the seawater in Pattaya bay. He was pulled up on this by dirtydog: Jomtien is ok, I have seen cleaner places in the world, but trying to prove that Pattaya beach is clean by posting a photo of Jomtien beach is slightly misleading to say the least. Some disturbing facts came out of this topic. dirtydog made the point that although Pattaya’s rainwater drainage should just contain rainwater,
Also the Great Puppet Master had a fondness for blaming any Thai financial problems on foreigners; just hope that the requirement isn’t increased!
Bitter Bloggers I’ve lived here for many years and know many expats, and chat with others when out and about. We all have moans at times about something that went wrong for us, then we just laugh at each other’s stories and get on with enjoying our lives. But expat websites contain many negative and often bitter letters bad-mouthing the Thais and
Happy people don’t often bother to write whereas whingers can’t wait to send their complaints off into cyberspace and they, and fellow-miseries, will use one incident to condemn the entire population. And have you noticed how some regular writers appear to spend all day bashing away at the keyboard? But blog-bile isn’t restricted solely to Thailand; take a look at articles in the national newspapers of your homeland and you will see most comments come from right wing ranters and leftist loonies— very few balanced opinions. Even innocent You Tube videos often attract abusive comments. As for remaining here; some may have to, others would complain no matter which country they lived in, including their own homeland; even Heaven would receive a battering from this lot.
ABOVE BAWD IN PATTAYA By JOHN THOMAS our Internet Forum Snoop
in fact it is a very common practice in the city for old shophouses, especially those in sois close to the beach, to connect their waste pipes and cess pits containing raw sewage into it. Loy toy also said this is common in residential properties throughout the city. As this stormwater exits into the sea, in both Pattaya and Jomtien, it inevitably carries more than rainwater with it. Also hold that thought for when the city’s streets are flooded in storms and you have to walk through the resulting lakes and rivers of water. Halfmile said: No sea-birds at the beach, nor any crabs running in the sand at sunset. Pattaya Beach seems to be a maritime deathzone. Perhaps the reasons for that were highlighted by posters such as Lostandfound, who said: It’s not just Pattaya city sh*t to worry about, there’s a whole petro-chemical industry up the coast pumping out who knows what, plus all of Bangkok’s crap coming down the Chao Phraya River. norton disturbingly expanded on this theme: The quality of Pattaya sewage treatment is a factor in polluting its beach. Even if their sewage treatment was so good the output could be bottled and sold as Pattaya Pure Mountain Spring water, Pattaya beach would still have a significant pollution problem. Being “down stream”, everything dumped into the Chao Phraya River (industrial waste, sewage, city drainage water), Samut Prakan (industrial waste, pesticides,
prawn farming waste) and Chon Buri (industrial waste and pesticides) ends up at Pattaya beach and everywhere else on the Eastern seaboard albeit somewhat diluted from the source. Loy toy succinctly hit another nail on the head when he said: Pattaya, in fact the whole of Chon Buri Province, has a major problem, and that is development versus infrastructure availability. I live quite close to the biggest waste water plant in Pattaya and it has not been upgraded in the last 10 years yet the number of people living in the area has grown 100 fold. Without going into too much detail I have had senior council officials stand in front of me and admit they have allowed whole communities to pipe their sewage pipes directly into the storm water systems and those pipes go nowhere near the waste water treatment plants. This water ends up flowing into Pattaya Bay, everyone knows it including the TAT and the hotel association. Apart from the original poster, Socal, who gamely (and amusingly) stuck to his guns, even though he had to move his own goalposts to do it, there wasn’t one serious rebuttal of the argument that Pattaya Bay is indeed filthy and hazardous to health. next edition – Pattaya’s Polluted Beaches Part 2. all comments or web Board tipoffs gratefully received at jt@pattayaone.net
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
Pattaya One 13
14 Pattaya One
A Fool in
Paradise
Rescued! If you are a foreign male living in Pattaya and a bit of a bar hound, you must have heard the news from Angeles City in the Philippines. It made all the papers and Internet news reports: “100 women rescued from angeles city night clubs” Late in the evening of 28th of June, one bar on Perimeter Road and four bars in the red light district of Fields Avenue were raided by a joint team composed of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), the Department of Justice’s Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (DOJ-IACAT), the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), and local policemen. Yes, it seems everybody wanted to get in on the act and all we were missing was the partridge in a pear tree. The bars raided were Sunshine, Golden Nile, Cambodia, Blue Nile Executive, and Blue Nile. But doesn’t the headline sound good? Aren’t the do-gooders beaming with pride? The Americans are
three Logie Baird’s and a well sucked banana: I doubt that John Logie Baird, the man who developed television, ever envisaged some of the places where TV would be watched. The windmill club go-go (Soi Diamond) has a total of three full-screen TVs in the den and during the English football season can show up to three different games at any one time. Combine this with about 40 dames of the chrome pole cavorting about the place in various stages of limited apparel, as well as relatively inexpensive booze prices, airconditioning and good music, and you have the makings of a good night out. Just picture the scene: Arsenal are playing Accrington Stanley and striker Carbonara Fellatio -on loan from Italian club Fornicatais fouled in the goal square, just at the point where a birthday-suited Lek places her well-sucked banana into the kind of cavity usually only on display in the privacy of one’s bedroom with the lights on ‘dim’. Where does a punter look? It’s not everyday Lek performs such a sensual scene with a potassiumfilled piece of fruit, but equally, how often does a player like Fellatio get the chance to score so easily?
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
Fun Town’s most vibrant
happy, the feminists are happy, the Christian Right is happy and all is well with the moralist’s world. However, we all know that newspaper reports, political grandstanding and the truth are poles apart. According to press reports, the raids stemmed from a complaint by the Crusade Against Good Customs and Decency International, a nongovernment organization, based in the city, that fights sex tourism. Don’t you just love that name? Where do I sign up? The word ‘crusade’ conjures up visions of me aloft a white horse carrying a lance ready to wipe the infidels from the face of the earth. I hear music: “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war …” The raid of Sunshine Bar resulted in the ‘rescue’ of 17 sex workers and the arrest of the Australian manager who police said would be charged with human trafficking, which carries a maximum prison term of life. I accept that human trafficking, whether it be for forced prostitution, forced labour or illegal immigration, should
be stamped out, but this guy is just a bar manager. I am certain he didn’t make treks out to remote villages with a net to kidnap women for his bar. As for the women being ‘rescued’: “The women don’t really consider it a rescue. They kept cursing us and tried their best to escape,” said CIDG Women and Children’s Protection Desk (WCPD) head Supt. Emma Libunao, who led the raids. An un-named foreign eyewitness reported: “The Golden Nile raid was not well prepared. There were a ton of girls who simply walked out the door as there were just too many to round up. Sort of like herding cats. I watch them load 100 girls from Golden Nile onto a 60 pax bus. They could not even close the door. Golden Nile raid did not net any owner or manager. From Cambodia they arrested the DJ and one girl. “I walked outside of Kokomos and a few minutes later a big bus drove by. It looked like it was absolutely packed with girls. It also looked like there were a few foreigners in the bus. A few minutes later down Fields (Avenue), I saw the bus had stopped at the new walking street sign. As I approached the bus the back door came open and a bunch of girls ran out of the bus (50 maybe?). Apparently many of the girls escaped but as I walked around the front I could see there were at least a dozen girls still on the bus and doors were now closed. I couldn’t see any foreigners on the bus by then. Not sure what happened but I
don’t think they intended to release all of those girls. It appeared that the remaining girls were unaware that the rear door was open and people in the crowd were trying to let them know. “Incompetence of this raid was a riot. They lost all but maybe 4 girls from the Golden Nile. Standing in front of Atlantis, I watched the bus pull up and stop. Apparently one of the girls on the bus was having a panic attack when the bus stopped to let the girl off to maybe treat her. 40 or 50 Golden Nile girls made a mad rush for the door and escaped out onto Fields Avenue. LOL.” Crusaders notwithstanding, the reason for the raids is linked to a US decision announced the previous day to remove the Philippines from a watch list of countries deemed not doing enough to combat human trafficking. The State Department has taken the Philippines, Singapore, and Laos off Tier 2 watch list of the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report, which means that the countries have not yet fully met the standards against human trafficking but are exerting efforts to do so. But the true reason behind the raids is that removal from the watch list ensures the continuous provision of humanitarian aid to the country. Yet another case of the US government using financial blackmail to bring other countries under its own dubious moral code.
N ghtmarch By Duncan Stearn
Then you realise something truly profound about the science of television and the space-time continuum. Here you are, sitting in a go-go bar in Pattaya, specifically the Windmill Club, while thousands of kilometres away a player with an improbable name is about to take a shot on goal. At the same time there are tens of thousands of others watching the same scene on TV’s throughout England, and elsewhere. Some of these people are watching it while sipping a pint of lager in their local pub, say in Snettington Snitherballs or Shellow Bowels. These people are most likely totally engrossed in the possibility of Fellatio scoring. Instead, you are torn between watching the shot and trying to keep an eye on Lek’s performance du jour with the banana. You solve the dilemma by the simple expedient of moving one barstool to your left so now you can
email: duncan@pattayaone.net
watch Fellatio take the shot, just at the point where the banana disappears in a way King Kong could never have envisaged. Meanwhile, just a couple of metres away, one of the girls in the Jacuzzi acquiesces to the desire of a couple of German customers that “you can perform ze golden shower, ya?” Frequent flyers: The airport go-go (Walking Street) has been a success story from its inception three years ago, and it’s not hard to see why. The service and welcome girls are dressed in fetching airline hostess-style uniforms. It’s worth going into the den just to look at them. Arguably, the Airport hostess uniforms started the trend followed by so many dens to use a theme for their welcome and service girls. Then, of course, the quality and numbers of the chrome pole molesters is first class. Many of the dancers on the narrow first
stage just inside the entrance are not showy types, but those in the Jacuzzi and on the showgirl stage are certainly keen on displaying as much skin as humanly possible. Draft amber fluid is 85 baht a glass, which is at the top end of the pricing scale, but considering the numbers and quality of the damsels on display -and comparing that figure to what so many non air-conditioned, outside beer bars charge for bottled amber nectar- it’s hardly outlandish. Definitely worth putting on the must visit list, if you can find a seat. on another planet: Early reports suggest the newly-opened moon club (Soi Diamond) is far more coyote than go-go and many locals wonder why anyone would bother with the place. After all, no draft amber, 130 baht for bottled nectar, 120 baht for lolly water, and 150 baht for lady drinks tends
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21 to suggest a management telling the hoi polloi to keep out, we’re only interested in ‘quality’ tourists with bulging wallets. I’m told bar fines are 2,000 baht prior to midnight, dropping to 1,000 baht after the witching hour. Once again, the message is pay for overpriced drinks and don’t try and take our girls away for organ recitals and etching perusals. a real bum steer: The diamond go-go (Soi Diamond) recently held one of its fairly regular in-house dance contests, on a slow Tuesday night. As usual, the place was busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger come midnight and the contest continued until about 3:00am. These danceathons feature damsels employed in Diamond as well as contract wallet emptiers from an agency in Bangkok. For the first time ever, this contest had more Bangkok dancers than local products. Most of the Bangkok girls are easy to pick out: at least nine out of 10 have had breast enlargement surgery. Unfortunately, to my jaded eyes, the quality of these enhancements varies greatly. Some look as though they were part of a discount promotion and performed by a work experience plastic surgeon using items readily available from a bicycle pump factory. Another of the Bangkok damsels clearly once had a foreigner with whom she was infatuated. While
Pattaya One 15
Fun Town’s most vibrant many girls make the mistake of having the name of a paramour tattooed on an upper arm, lower back, or upper breast, this particular lady decided ‘Kenneth’ would look good stretched across her left buttock cheek, with his surname on the right cheek. Maybe, as she gets much older, the name will wrinkle up to something like ‘Kent’ and she can claim she is an aficionado of Superman. Putting the bytes on: Increasingly, bar owners are turning to the Internet in an effort to better promote their businesses. Yes, websites for go-go’s and other bars have been around for a long time, but in many cases these sites were simply set up and all-but forgotten, or updated irregularly. The classroom go-go in Soi Pattayaland 2 was one of the first to recognize the value of Internet promotion and still keeps its website updated. Others who appear to be taking the added time to generate a substantial on-line presence are the Sapphire club go-go (Soi 15, off Walking Street) and the alcatraz go-go on Walking Street. Both have put together a fairly reasonable Internet presence and can be found at the following urls: www.sapphirepattaya.com and www.alcatrazpattayagogo.com. Piece of Pith: If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
s a t i l o L www.lolitapattaya.com
Pattaya
A Gentlemen’s Lounge
• Coyote Dancing Nightly Sat-Thurs • Extensive Music & Video Library • Live Music Friday Nights • Complimentary Pool & Wi-Fi
Ask the staff about our VIP Card! Soi LK Metro, Pattaya. Tel: 038 720 689 Open 10am-2am
" VOTED PATTAYA'S
# 1 GoGo
2008, 2009 & 2010 " SOI 15 WALKING StREEt www.babydollspattaya.com
16 Pattaya One
Fun Town’s most vibrant
1 - 15 August 2011 Issue 21
kiwis dominate Bira racing The big Ford Falcons rolled into Bira on a high in mid-July for Super Car Thailand’s second round after a clean sweep Sa Kaeo debut six weeks earlier. After the dust settled on a hot, action-packed weekend on the track the New Zealanders emerged with a win apiece as their steamroller continues, now with four wins from four. Aekarat Discharoen started the weekend off by planting his Subaru Impreza on pole for both races. In Saturday’s 22-lapper though, it was the Falcons that seized early control of the race using their power to great effect on Bira’s fast sections. Dwayne Carter, double winner at Sa Kaeo, led teammate Craig Corliss, but when the former slowed, the latter romped to victory. In Sunday’s race, Carter made amends to take his third win of the season. In ‘Super Retro’ no one could touch Henk Kiks; the Dutchman won twice in his Porsche 944, and fourth overall on Sunday was an impressive way to end to the weekend. Elsewhere, Pattaya resident Thomas Raldorf, saw his timing belt fail in race one and then, bumped
to the back of the grid in race two following a protest, a battling drive up the order ended when his Impreza expired in clouds of smoke on the downhill section just meters from where he parked up the previous day. Once again the factory Toyotas were nowhere to be seen. The reigning champions have a mountain to climb; the brand new Altis still lacks development and track time and looked nervous all weekend. After his misfortunes at Sa Kaeo it was back to business as usual for Mana Pornsiricherd in ‘Super Truck’ as he got his title defence on track – no one else got a look in. Hopping straight out of his Super Car and into his Mazda pickup, popular Thai actor Pete Thongchua was rewarded for his hard work with an overall podium on Sunday. In Super 2000, Jack Lemvard won both races to make it three on the trot; he’s romping away with the championship.
By Edd Ellison e: edd@interfuture-media.com ph: 083 8005800)
for someone special ! สําหรับคนพิเศษ
16.5 mb
www.baanyai.asia 037 243 248 eng 084 958 6569 thai