Billions

A series of early morning scenes in Walking Street,as one day closes and another opens up.

That the water pressure is bollocks,and that the floor of said toilet will be littered with shit-stained tissues.

I booked a Mr T car to collect me from the airport,and everything was as it should be. Email confirmation was sent within minutes of my request. Driver was on time,sober,smart and careful. Car was clean. I asked about Mr Ts operation and here's the score....Mr T owns all the vehicles himself,he maintains them,fuels them,pays all the parking and toll charges. The drivers....there are twenty of them....just drive. They get 150 baht for a one way journey from Patts to the airport and vice versa,but 350 if they have a fare in both directions. So,for a driver taking a passenger to the airport,and then another back to Patts,the driver trousers 350 and Mr T 1550. If that goes off several times a day,and twenty drivers are working flat out,it's quite a lucrative operation. As my driver said this morning,with a loud laugh,"Mr T a velly rich man".

Yep,they have been spruced up. The IFE boxes are fixed vertically to one leg of the seat in front so you can still sprawl out and get your feet underneath.

Was just looking through a few photos of a recent trip when I noticed the cowboy who demonstrates his tiny daughter doing bendy tricks outside Peppermint on Walking Street has increased the bizarre factor in the "show" they perform. A year ago,the girl was curling like a scorpion,and removing her glasses with her toes,while doing a handstand on a table. Maybe the act was getting stale,or not pulling in enough baht. The latest version has the mite still elevated on a card table,but this time there are a few plastic breakfast bowls,and on top of these some glass tumblers supporting a big green drinks tray which she now uses as the platform to perform the handstand.On this tray are more glasses supporting another tray on which are more glasses supporting yet another tray! The third tray supports her head.Then she places and removes glasses on her head with her toes,as before. Will be interesting to see how it evolves from here. Broken glass,hoops of fire,razor blades? Not sure if the father wants shooting,or applauding for managing the show and keeping the family knee deep in baht.

I too will be flying in June,but am unaffected by these particular cancellations,so alls well. The last flight out I took from LHR was seriously underpopulated,maybe 30% full.Looks like Thai are removing a few flights from the schedule to match supply with demand.

I had a couple of crowns sorted last week at Pattaya International Hospital on Soi 4,on the top floor. I didn't ask about the price,just presented my problems and let them crack on with putting it all right. As it turned out the cost was like the service,all good and no complaints from me. The bloke doing the work was Dr. Bhornbhol Bhuangmalit...a character to say the least. The main reason I went there was that it was a reputable and significant facility,I assumed their budget was enormous and they would have all the latest kit and technology,unlike some one-man-band operations,where the equipment might be limited. I agree with the comment about price being secondary to quality of performance. Dentistry,like other health purchases,isn't an area where you look to cut corners to save a few quid,you look for the best quality of service and not for the cheapest suppliers on the block. The view from the ninth floor is pretty spectacular too,btw.

Yes and no..... TG916 yesterday was a refurbed 747....and was good to have so much space! I like the wide bodies.... There are IFE boxes fixed under some seats,but fortunately they are positioned vertically and to one side,which means that you can still spread out and get your feet well under the seat infront. I had a great sleep,just like the good old days. The width available is slightly restricted,but not by much. It might inhibit guys like Larry Craig from taking a "wide stance" though.

I watched a programme in the UK called "How It's Made" on the Quest television channel,and they followed the entire production process for Hot Dogs. Having seen that,I will never ever be tempted to eat one ever again,they are basically processed rubbish with flavoring and coloring added to make them vaguely palatable.How something so vile can be so popular is amazing,particularly in the information age in which we live.

I wandered from Soi 13 to Walking Street earlier tonight too and rattled off a few photos,will resize them and add to the thread later in the week. So many really young kids out there,unsupervised. Can't see the schools being well attended tomorrow. And it sounded like punk rock coming from the reggae stage about 10 pm. Not sure what that was about.

Just went to collect some laundry,and found the place I use has shut down for three days as the music festival takes over the Beach Road area...wasn't expecting that. Any major changes to expect over the weekend? I am told Beach Road becomes a Walking Street,no vehicles allowed. Is Walking Street alive and kicking,or do the employees takes a few days off? Anything else to anticipate? Thanks

I was monitoring LHR-BKK direct flights over the last month or so,waiting for some matters in the UK to resolve themselves before making a booking. That opportunity presented itself a week ago,and a 650 GBP option appeared out of the blue,with other options by Thai being 900-1200 GBP for the same or similar days,so I took the deal,thinking that capacity must be high for these prices to be competitive. Unusual though was that EVA was coming in with the lowest direct flight on every search. So,three days after making the booking I was at Heathrow,checking in at a deserted Thai desk. The flight departed,perhaps only at 30% of load capacity. Empty rows of seats everywhere. It was like in the old days,when it was usual to have an entire row of seats to yourself,and could bed down with ease. No groups of pensioners this time,on their way to Vietnam. Surprisingly quite a few single women,and the rest blokes of a certain age. Maybe the market is very depressed on this route? I can't remember it being so desolate for many a year. What made me think is that Thai are still pushing high prices as the flight departure day nears yet are prepared to fly almost empty rather than attract more travelers to take up the spare capacity with attractive pricing. Looks like BA have the same forecasts showing reduced demand,and are doing something about it. As are EVA.

Thanks. I was brought up on them.....Hollands pies. The Meat and Potato was my favourite,then the peppery small cylinderical Meat pie and once or twice a calorie monster called a Butter Pie. Every chippy in Lancashire used to sell them. The Steak and Kidney Pudding had a soggy consistency,and would collapse in your hand as you took a bite. Never heard it called a Baby's Head though,must have been regional slang.

What is a Baby's Head ?

I used D2D a few times last year,then saw a cable tv commercial for Waiter On Wheels,so started using them as the menu prices were not inflated and incredibly they added no delivery charge. If there's a new player,what's the usp,as WoW have got the price advantage?

There's a K bank virtually opposite the Lek,behind the Maccy Ds in the front of The Avenue complex. This thread should help too. http://www.pattayatalk.com/forums/topic/58230-opening-a-thai-bank-account-in-2-easy-steps/page__hl__kasikorn

There's a chunky free sample downloadable from the Amazon kindle store covering writings from 2000 and 2001.

Mr Stearn has bundled all the articles together and is now selling as an ebook. Here's what he wrote... From InPattayaNow,6 Jan 2013 : There comes a time in every columnist’s life when you know you’ve said all you’re really ever going to say. You find yourself starting to repeat the same mantras, writing the same story in ways that feel like ever-decreasing circles, to the point where you think you’re about to disappear up your own rectal chamber…metaphorically of course. I began the ‘Nightmarch’ column as an accident of fate rather than a definite plan way back in what now seems an almost surreal time. After 11 years in either weekly or fortnightly print (with a few ‘enforced’ breaks in that time) the column came to an end. I had also been writing a more generalised column under the same name for the Pattaya Trader monthly magazine, starting in January 2004 and finally ending with the November 2012 issue. Those who have been readers of InPattayaNow.com will no doubt have also noticed I no longer bother upgrading or updating my nightlife pieces. Nightmarch is, to all intents and purposes, now quite happily retired from the task of writing about nightlife in Pattaya. So, realising I had written far more words about the night entertainment scene in Fun Town than was really healthy for the liver or lungs, I decided I would cobble the entire newspaper oeuvre together into an e-book. Entitled Chronicles of Nightmarch, the compilation of the columns of Nightmarch covers its beginnings in the Pattaya Mail newspaper in June 2000 and goes all the way through to its conclusion in the Pattaya One newspaper in September 2011. Almost unwittingly it provides an interesting social history of the growth of the nightlife scene in Pattaya in the first decade of the twenty-first century. This volume also includes items that were cut out of the published versions because they were deemed too strong for the censors. They reappear here because in most cases the items were nowhere near as controversial as the editors thought at the time. Compilations of newspaper columns very often fail to have the impact on those readers who recall reading the pieces in the original. This is simply because the material for a newspaper column is rarely written with posterity or the future in mind. The impact is meant to be felt in the present. Even so, there will be many who have lived in Pattaya or been regular visitors to the city over the time frame of the Nightmarch column who will no doubt have their memories jogged of the times they spent trawling the bars. For others, who might not have ever been to Pattaya, the pieces will provide an essential introduction to the jigsaw that makes up its unique nightlife. The e-book is available on Amazon and Smashwords and via Thailand’s premier book website: http://ebooks.dco.co.th/history/view_document/64-chronicles-of-nightmarch.html

Hope so....decent legroom under the window seats then.