irishman

The Flipper House or Lodge. Eastiny OK also! Cheers

On the weekdays, I always try and allow 3 hours to get to the airport. Seems like there is always something! I don't think I have made it in less than about 2h45m whenever I have gone. For a 12:30 flight, I have them pick me up at 7:00. Cheers

I'm not German so I'm not sure about the taste but I have found a lot of German, Austrian, and Swiss restaurants in Pattaya that claim to have the different wursts. North of the dolphin circle, there are a whole mess of them as well as on second road by soi 7 & 8. I too love bockwurst and potato salad but while some of it is OK, I've never found anywhere that I considered really good at both. Cheers

Not big. But you can have a chair and relax with a brew. Cheers

Sandy Springs is the best of the 3 Cheers

Yes Yes Yes Not IMHO too noisy Std room ok and quieter Again IMHO Cheers

See the thread by Soi 7. He brought a Cyberhome CH 300 DVD player from the States. I just bought one also for $36.95 from Best Buy and will be bringing it back with me. It is quite small but takes 120 -240 volts, is region free and plays a bunch of other stuff also. Cheers

Hi Pie, On Jomtien Soi 4 there are a couple of places you might want to check out. The first is a very laid back place called Moonshine guesthouse and/ or bar that I frequently go to for the american food. They also have a bunch of rooms upstairs for something like 550 baht. The soi away from the street is pretty quiet but yet close to everything. It is about 100 m from the beach road on the right hand side as you walk up the Soi. I tried a short time in one of the rooms but it's been a while and I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the room at the time so I can't say much about the room. You should look for yourself anyway. At the end of the soi, on the right hand side again, there is a fairly large hotel/guesthouse whose name I don't remember but might be worth while checking out. Cheers, Mike

IMHO the beaches along the Andaman Sea are the best I have ever seen. Cheers

Just a repeat of the above information. Until you are here and see for yourself what you are willing to put up with, you can't really decide or have someone else decide for you. One person mentioned the Sawasdee and I just want to tell you that I have seen the rooms there and have a closet at home in the States that is bigger. I'm serious! Usually the condos will give you more room for your buck and the further you are willing to travel will also lower your costs. There are some damn cheap rooms to be had if you go down some of the Sois off Jomtien Beach Road. Cheers

Not sure exactly what this is supposed to be but the info looks to be old and incomplete. Cheers

I can't give you any first hand information because when I was there and in a position to take the train from BKK to Chiang Mai I waited until a couple of days before the event and then tried to get a ticket. No dice! The train was fully booked. And the next opening for the first class day train was over a week away. So if you are serious about taking the train, I would advise you to make reservarions as soon as possible. Cheers

I had the occasion to stay at the Eastiny for one night a couple of months ago and was asked for either a credit card impression or a 1000 baht deposit against the mini bar usage. Since I was trying to pay cash to avoid leaving any trails, I did do the deposit with them and had absolutely no trouble getting it back the next morning when I checked out. Cheers

Eva has a bit of a strange policy about upgrading and you have to upgrade each segment separately. Because of this, there are a number of people who upgrade themselves for the long segment from the States to Taipei but don't worry about the shorter flight to Bangkok. Anyway, those people get upgraded about half the time on the shorter flight but you can pretty much forget about an upgrade from Economy to Evergreen Deluxe if you aren't upgrading even part of the flight. Cheers

Please note that the buses don't run from about 10 pm to the early am. You don't want to sit in a terminal all night. Cheers

Hey Patch, Probably safe if you don't wonder off the beaten track. Have been some incidents reported if you are alone and wonder down a vacent soi. If you go up the soi by the Blues Factory to 2nd road or whatever it is called there, and then turn right and go directly to the RG you shouldn't have any trouble. If you walk on the street, you still might get a baht bus for 10 baht even at that time of night. Cheers

I think I would try the "Cabbages & Condoms" resort. If you can get one of the rooms right on the edge of the cliff, you have a nice view over the sea with no other hotels in sight. I like the nice garden atmosphere. It's out of the way a bit but if you can afford to spend that much on a room, you should have no trouble paying the 100 baht to get into town and there is no shortage of baht buses at the entrance. Cheers

Changman, She's probably trying to tell you that she's taking English lessons at one of the many "schools" in Pattaya. Fees range from free to about 150 baht an hour for Thais. She might be trying to tell you that she is trying to learn how to communicate with you better. Cheers

I fly Eva all the time from SFO to BKK and while the flight times for departure and arrival are very favorable and the main reason I use them, they are an economy airline in all other aspects. If you weigh more than 200 lbs., or are 6 feet tall, you will probably not enjoy your trip in economy very much. In addition, their food isn't great and the coffee is probably the worst I have ever tasted anywhere. BUT, if you take the evergreen deluxe class for a couple hundred dollars more, you aren't bothered by noisy kids (I don't think I have ever flown economy where I didn't have a kid crying 10 feet or less away from me) , have a nice big lounge chair to sleep in and the food is slightly better. And the tea is passible. Cheers

irishman USA USA large = Thai XL?

Well, this is probably too much trouble for most of you but my lady friend and I email back and forth in Thai. Although, since she is studying English, she sometimes surprises me with an email in English. I use a Yahoo account to communicate with her because you can encode in Thai and see what you are sending. You can also receive in Thai. I couldn't see anything but gobblygook when I used my normal email program to communicate with her. To write, I use a program called ABCThai by Alex Blume. There is a free light version of this program and also a full featured version for $25 that you can obtain from a pay site. I don't remember where I originally found it but it works fairly well. It has a virtual keyboard which can be used to write and also has the advantage of accepting cut and paste words from another handy little program I picked up in Pattaya. It is called the English Thai Softfare Dictionary on CD. I think I picked it up at the Royal Garden Bookazine. I compose in the ABCThai notebook pages and then cut and paste the whole thing to the yahoo account. It looks funny to start but if you have the encoding set right, you can see the Thai script when you look at sent messages. I'm probably simplifying a bit here but a lot of it is just trial and error and playing with it. Anyway, it is always slow going learning something new but after about 5 months of practice, I find that I can often read her whole email with only needing to look up a couple of words. Kind of fun and you don't have to worry about tones or mispronouncing a word. And if a word stumps you, you can always look it up at your convenience. Cheers ;D

Better yet, Just cancel the trip to PI and spent the last 3 weeks and 6 days in Pattaya! Cheers ;D

Same Same, Actually, she is meeting me at the airport. I was just joking about FLB. Usually don't hit it until the second or third day. Cheers

Hi Roy, Thought I was finally going to be able to share a ride with someone. Then I read it again and realized I would be arriving 12.5 hours earlier. Will be at FLB by the time you arrive. ;D Cheers,

Take the Skytrain down to Ekemai, get on the air conditioned bus and save yourself a bit. Costs ~90 baht for the bus departing every half hour and another 20 baht when you get to Pattaya. A lot safer IMHO than riding a taxi and pretty convenient also.