Billions

...in the west. But in Pattaya,its probably ok. As seen on Beach Road,near Walking Street,at 7.30 pm this evening

The products that get repeated mentions are "milockie" and "pacsafe". Must be one of these?

I thought Agoda and Booking are owned by the same entity? Agoda works for me,sometimes get surprised by the final price as vat and service are added to the billing,making it 17% more than what was showing on the screen. All photos on the site are taken with wide angle lenses and even the smallest room looks like an aircraft hanger,something to consider too.

I was thinking exactly the same thing yesterday! Interesting how they hide the camera in a bag or under a jacket then whip it out in a flourish when they spot a couple minding their own business,only to stash it away again when they get the predictable refusal.Must be amazing for them when they finally get a sale.

The women who beg with the hired tiny children on Pattaya streets seem conspicuous by their absence. Second Road was a popular hunting ground with beggars on the corner by Tai,at the junction of 13/1 (Soi Punch Up,Soi Hooligan,Soi Yamoto ),next to Tims and opposite the Night Bazaar near CF .Now nowhere to be seen! Have they been rounded up or is it just too hot for the fuckers to sit in the searing heat?

Nice bit of forestry to bury the bodies.

Opening night is during Songkran. Surely nobody is foolish enough to bring a water cannon?

Was there last week....very busy due to half term and families making up the numbers.The Thai flight TG911 was chokka,loads of ankle biters on board as parents thinking it's cool to drag their sprogs to the tropics and feed them spicey food for a week.Poor mites would be better off going to Benidorm. Huge queues at immigration at Bkk too.

Read this,and then follow the links at the end of the article. http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2015/03/boiler-room-boss-found-dead-in-pai.html

Wasn't Shennanigans built on the back of boiler-room fraud,like plenty of other Irish sounding bars in Thailand?? If so,they would never get a dirty satang from me,no matter how good or bad the place was/is.

^^Thai have binned the evening flight out of LHR and the mid-day one from Bangers. So TG911 is the remaining outbound one from London and TG910 the midnight-ish one departing the Swamp.

Just received an email from Thai,confirming the changeover to the A380-800 from 1st July. I'm gonna miss those 747s.....

Here are a few photos around Kabuchiko,one of the brightest and maybe safest red light districts in the world. I'll add images in bundles of ten,might take a few days to find them,resize and load on here as I'm using a very old laptop....

Double post.

I'll find my Tokyo photos tonight,and rescale a few for here. Meanwhile,try Google images for "Kabuchiko" "Shinjuku" "Kappabashi" and "Tsukiji"....and "Tokyo taxis" "Tokyo neon" and "Harajuku". And the train map too!

Re travel in Tokyo.....the train/subway system is efficient,clean,huge.....the transport map looks horrendously complicated,but its ok when you work out what it all means! Taxis are gorgeous vehicles....so smart with quaint illuminated signs on the roof...often the taxi drivers are like old-school chauffeurs with peaked hats and gloves....but prices are very high! From Narita airport to the city,get an airport bus...you need to book a ticket in either direction...a taxi will break the bank. Food.....well,I eat sushi over there....very cheap in many places and so fresh! All department stores have restaurants on the top floor,another good tip for eating well at sensible prices. And there are noodle bars everywhere too. You won't have problems eating well for a price. The amazing thing about Tokyo is how safe it is.....makes London look like the horrible dog-eats-dog ghetto society it really is.

I've been to Tokyo four times in the last five years,and will go again in April....its an incredible city. Its the safest place I've ever visited....absolutely no fear of untoward incidents anywhere,people are fantastically polite and helpful,and everything is so precise. I stay in Shinjuku,and the redlight area of Kabuchio is close at hand...even if you dont play,its a spectacular place to visit. Taxis are amazingly decorative and colourful,the neon canyons and cityscapes are awesome,the girls dress so seductively.....its a full-on visual feast. As a keen photographer,you'll be happy as the proverbial pig in shit! Tsukiji fish market is mindblowing in its scale,and Kappabashi (the restaurant supply district) for its shops selling knives and plastic display food,then there's Ginza to see where the rich do their shopping.And Harajuku,where the young 'uns go for the latest fashions one thousand percent. There are so many quirks....vending machines selling tins of hot coffee...and just about everything else!....people reading ultra explicit hardcore sex comics on the subway....guards whose job it is to squeeze passengers onto trains...sex bars everywhere for women to visit which are full of men/youths for hire....short time hotels everywhere....and capsule hotels.....when it rains,everyone has huge umberellas,not a hat to be seen......gaming arcades everywhere....no smoking in the street.....cyclists use the footpaths,not the road.....so many active pensioners..... Its like a parallel universe....a separate line of evolution....so many differences to the western way of doing things! Thats why Japanese tourists in London take photos of everything.....our society is as strange to them as theirs is to us...you'll be doing the same when you get there too! I might add a few photos over the weekend to whet your appetite!

Andy Dixon.....not the guy with the same name who was a tattooist in Kensington Market in the late 80s? If so,he was a very loose cannon...but then that name is probably a very common one. The story I heard regarding the fall from great financial heights of Steve & Co was that they had a policy of bill padding or not giving change or some such shennanigans with most of their customers,resulting in mass withdrawal of their once regular customers. And sometimes trying to charge entry fees?? I'll check that out next time I'm there,as the story was an interesting one and seemed plausible. Like they imploded from sharp business practise. Another character from that "manor" was the Scottish bloke who owned The Kennel...a place made famous as it was the watering hole of Derrick Bird,the Cumbrian assassin who went on the rampage in Whitehaven a few years ago,wiping out fellow taxi drivers with a long gun. Bird apparently found true love with one of the Kennel floozies. Must say,I found the Kennel to be one of the most run down bars in Pattaya,which is saying something!

Steve might be the bizarre character holed-up in the appartment at the top of the building which had the gay club on the ground floor (next to Cheers)...word was he is a virtual recluse,in terrible health and has psychiatric issues....but that might be "spin" from my storyteller. He still owns that building,if indeed it is him. Now,that Dudley character from Penthouse/Obsessions/Kitten Club...any juicy anecdotes about him??????

Wasn't most of the go-gos here owned/managed by the same guy/guys....once thay lost their mojo then their empire folded like a cheap suit? Apparently Palmers is open,moved across the street and is halved in size. The gay club next door to the new Palmers has closed but could reopen at any point as they are looking for new tennants...and the reclusive bossman is still in residence above,in his tower but minus his bodyguard (so the strange story goes). The eccentric Brit who owns the Penthouse/Obsessions/Kitten enterprise is still there,as is the cynical old fella who owns the Shamrock opposite...but never the twain meet. Plenty of stories to be heard in that neck of the woods!

Many Thai opticians still believe their prices are lower than western prices,but that ceased to be the case several years ago as big chains like Vision Express,Boots and Specsavers (in the UK) started competitive pricing.Thai prices are often higher than what you get get on the UK high street,one exception though being repairs,which are minimal cost in LoS.

Having met him,and knowing something of his history,I think that the massively over-used phrase "living the dream" actually does fit the bill when referring to Mr Upton. When I first saw him on Pattaya People TV I thought he was a tosser but was later to discover he's a really nice bloke!

I've been running the Minix for nearly five months.....have had lots of channels drop out of service whilst watching them or suffered huge buffering delays (particularly frustrating when watching sporting events) and also having the sound massively out of sync with the motion graphics more times than I care to remember.Also frustrating is when some channels go offline and can't be watched,or have to be manually re-clicked every few minutes to keep the feed alive. Some channels are fine but too often the ones I choose let me down badly. I've just booked a forthcoming install of the new BT Infinity 2 broadband here in the UK with fast fast fast download speeds so will see if that changes things for the better. I know the programming is free but the imperfections in the viewing experience are making me wonder if I'll only use it when on the go abroad when I'm in a hotel and have miserable English language tv options, rather than rely on it in the UK when I already have a solid and reliable Sky and Freeview signal available. In spite of all that,its still well worth the money because when its firing on all cylinders life is good! I'm hoping my upcoming switch to megafast broadband improves the viewing experience,I'm sure it will be a big improvement.

Just prowled the ebookers website looking at flights from London to BKK in June and notice that Thai are now the cheapest direct carrier,beating EVA and BA by some distance. Finally,they are competitive! The downside though is that there are fewer options..... They have chopped their flight itinerary to one a day,losing the evening flight out of London (TG917)and its corresponding midday-ish one from Bangers (TG916),so whats left is the midday departure from Heathrow,and the midnight-ish one from The Swamp. Doubling up might mean full flights and less empty seats to spread out on,so all good things come to an end. And those spacious 747s have been dropped ....less room to stretch out below the seat in front as its fitted with the IFE box?? Could be worse though....Thai have binned their Bkk-Jo/berg route,and are scrapping Bkk-Madrid and Bkk-Moscow,and maybe Bkk-LAX as they try to balance the books.