zaphodbeeblebrox

Yes, the best pizza comes from NYC. Has something to do with the questionable water supply. Also, if you have been to Lombardi's, which is the best in NYC, you will see the only legal coal-fired pizza oven in the U.S. It was grandfathered in. Lombardi's I agree that Chicago deep dish is a very good, and very different alternative. There is a chain in the San Francisco Bay Area called Zachary's, which makes a top-notch stuffed pizza. I was going to school in Berkeley when the first Zachary's opened on College Avenue (technically in Oakland, in a little village called Rockridge - and no Blazing Saddles jokes here). The opening night, there was a line out the door. To this day, over 25 years later, there is a line out the door almost every night. Zachary's is rated the top pizza restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area by Zagat's. Zachary's

BigD - As our resident guru of frugality, I have looked forward to your posts on this topic. Thanks.

I agree that if EVA retires its 747 fleet, I will retire from flying EVA. I will put up with the cramped 777 seats for the leg from Taipei to Bangkok, but not over the Pacific. When I book on EVA, I have really been paying attention to the aircraft type. More and more 777 flights are slipping into their schedule from the US to Asia.

Thanks for the restaurant review. I will definitely check it out when I am in Pattaya in January. 700 baht for an excellent steak. I know this is expensive by Pattaya standards, but it sounds like about the best steak you can find in Pattaya. Ruth Chris Steakhouse in the U.S. charges twice this amount for a steak without sides. As long as the steak is top-notch, I don't have a problem with this price, although I would expect something in that price range in Bangkok, and not Pattaya. 59 days and counting 'til wheels up.

Cosa Nostra, Soi 7 Casa Pascal, 2nd Road Hopf, Beach Road Bruno's, Thapparaya Road Tipps Food Court

I also like thin and crispy pizza. Thin and crispy is a style of Italian pizza known as Neapolitan. If you were to cook it in a 450 degree oven, you would end up with a limp pizza, like I had at Bauernstuben Restaurant on Beach Road. Restaurant Review inside my trip report A Neapolitan pizza (inspired by the pizzas baked in Naples) is baked at temperatures in excess of 825 degrees F, and as high as 1000 degrees F, not 450 degrees F. This is from the Verace Neapolitan Association which certifies restaurants as serving Neapolitan pizza. I have heard only about 30 pizza parlors in the US have been so certified. Verace Neapolitan Association Still looking for a good Neapolitan pizza in Pattaya. Zaphod

I returned through LAX in May and customs impounded my laptop. I guess I looked like a sex tourist as there was nothing on the laptop to make them suspicious. I got a call about 1 week later that the laptop was ready to be picked up. Other than a few sightseeing photos from Thailand and a few XXX movie clips downloaded in the US, there was absolutely nothing of concern on the laptop. I didn't notice any damage or any changes upon receiving my laptop back. A full trip report will be forthcoming.

Spam

Index funds are an interesting way of investing in order to beat the S&P500. Take a look at the Russell 2000 or Russell microcap index funds. These funds have left the S&P index in the dust. I despise mutual funds. However, I identified a great mutual fund, without high load costs. Take a look at the Third Avenue Value Fund, which averages more than a 20% annual gain. My stock portfolio has averaged a 27% gain the past 3 years, but I treat investing as a second job.

Cream with your coffee? The question is, would you drink the coffee as served by this girl? Personally, I'm like the last customer in the video, bring it on honey!

http://www.filedorm.com/show.php/873_BADDAYAT.WMV.html

This fire made the local news telecast in Los Angeles and there was some scary video footage. Apparently, the fire started before the club opened, and most of the victims were employees.

It might be a little loud at night. The hotel is next door to 2 nightclubs. The Beat, which is a disco, stays open until 6am! The boys in brown supervise the departure of its patrons each morning.

2800 baht should be for the 2 bedroom prima suite. Why would they charge for a guest in a suite that is supposed to be for 2 people? Did you request 1 extra bed? I can tell you that at BVP, you can bring as many guests as you like at night, no joiner fee, but your TG's have to leave an ID. If they insist on this guest charge, you should tell them you are booking elsewhere.

The front desk handed me a card with the rates, and I read the rates to the manager, and she affirmed those rates.

If I remember correctly, the prices currently on their website are already low season. When I booked in February, the high season rates were still posted, and averaged about 400 baht more per room for each class of rooms. High season ends in January. Some hotels charge more in April during Songkran, but not BVP. Look around, because it's real slow right now, and you can probably get a better deal elsewhere.

The off-season rates for 2006 are as follows: standard studio 1100 baht/day deluxe studio 1800 baht/day 1 bd junior suite 2200 baht/day 2 bd prima suite 2800 baht/day The rates on the website were a promotional new management offer good through April 30, 2006. It seems the only difference is the standard studio rate, which is substantially lower this off-season.

I thought I would update this thread with a new review and some photos. I stayed in the junior suite in the off-season, 2250 baht/night. Yes, this is pricey, but I was willing to splurge, and I thought this was a good choice, without going overboard for something like the Montien or the penthouse suite at the Vault. The location is good, and there's no construction noise. You are walking distance to Soi 6. There's a couple of nightclubs at the corner of Soi 4 and Beach Road. One of the clubs doesn't close until 6am. I saw some boys in brown monitor the patrons who leave the club at close. The clubs attract an interesting crowd outside. BVP, however, is located closer to 2nd Road, so you won't even notice the clubs unless you walk out to Beach Road. It is close to the Big C shopping center. The ameniites have been previously described. I want to add that there is an excellent Thai restaurant in the lobby. Your room comes with 2 free breakfasts. The breakfast buffet is quite good. There are all the American favorites, and the staff is there to freshly cook your eggs to order. However, I always selected the Thai entrees (I don't care if its breakfast, I can get eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, cereal, etc. anywhere). There was a yellow chicken curry, a red pork curry and a spicy squid curry. The squid curry was my favorite, as it was quite hot, and an eye-opener in the morning. Based on having these dishes at breakfast, I know the restaurant, and the hotel's room service would be excellent meal choices. The best qualities of the hotel: 1) the bathroom is large, with a shower, a bathtub, and a toilet, all with hand-held shower heads' The bathroom is well-designed, and you will not have any water on the floor after using the bath or shower. Also, the shower is about 2 meters from the bed. Gotta like anything that shortens the time from shower to bed. 2) the L-shaped couch is comfortable. 3) there are remote-controlled AC units in the living room and the bedroom. These are high-quality, very adjustable units. You will never be too hot in these rooms. 4) the kitchen has a two-burner stove, an oven, a microwave, and an excellent fridge/freezer. You get two free bottles of water daily. 5) it's guest friendly, as many as you like; 6) the staff is quite personable. I became chums with one of them. You can't really classify their jobs: they bellhop, cook, wait tables, do various maintenance duties, etc. I think one of the maids proposed to me, but I might have misinterpreted her Thaiglish. 7) reasonably fast wireless DSL in the room. I would prefer ethernet, but there are repeaters on every floor, and I didn't have a lot of problems with dropouts. The worst qualities of the hotel: 1) it has one of those automatic electrical turn-offs when you take your key chain out of the slot by the door. I think you could jerry-rig it to keep the AC on. Honestly, I found no need to have the AC run while I was gone, as the room kept fairly cool during the day, and the AC is so good, it can cool down a hot room to about 20 degrees celsius in less than 5 minutes. 2) the entertainment sytem: 2 small TV's, they don't even get the same channels. The cable was mediocre, although I could get ESPN on the TV in the bedroom. They should put a stereo and DVD player in the rooms. 3) the bed is hard. This didn't really bother me, but I know there are a lot of BM's that dislike hard beds. 4) the in-room safe is small, and only a four number digital programmable combination. I have a small laptop, so I was ok, but if you have a large laptop or large camera, it probably won't fit. There is also a safe at reception, but limited access hours. Overall, I was very happy with this choice of hotels, and would stay at BVP again.

Owen: I concur in your rules of investing, but investing (i.e. long term holding) should only be used for non-discretionary funds (your retirement account) and should be conservatively invested in value stocks that pay dividends or bonds. I am more interested in stock trading, because investing is fairly boring. Discretionary funds (money you can replace through earnings, if you lose it all) needs to be constantly monitored to allow for maximum returns. My two rules are as follows: 1) you should always be diversified, never have more than 20% of your holdings in one sector. (i.e., never have more than 20% oil, or 20% tech). 2) 50% of successful trading is identifying bullish sectors. For instance, right now the best sectors are energy, basic and precious metals, telecom-related tech, and brokerages. The worst sectors are hospitals, biotech, and shipping. Some retail right now is suspect, because of rising gasoline prices. As an analogy: a bad house in a great neighborhood will bring you more money, than a great house in a bad neighborhood. You have an interesting analysis of the general US economy as a predictor of moves in the stock market. Right now, the scale is slightly tipped in favor of bullishness. You probably overestimated the collapse of the housing market. With the fed probably set to leave the federal reserve's rate at 5% following the raise at the May 2006 meeting, mortgage rates are probably topped out. Yes, the housing market has softened, but, other than price drops in over-inflated condo markets (Florida and Las Vegas) prices appear to be stable, there is just less volume of sales. There will be no dramatic loss of house values for the vast majority of American homeowners. In fact, in some markets, like California, housing prices will probably rise 5% this year. That's a far cry short of the 20% annual growth we have been seeing, but certainly there is no bursting of the housing bubble. I agree with your analysis of the impending fall in value of the U.S. dollar. However, the major impetus for its decline will be the federal reserve's halt of the incremental increases in the lending rate. As you point out, there are economic benefits to the devaluation of the U.S. dollar. Finally, there is a major technical reason for U.S. stocks to be in bull-mode at this time. The stock market staged a nice recovery from the 2000 stock market crash. For the past two years, the market has been consolidating (i.e., moving sideways). The primary mover of the market is earnings. While earnings have been good, the fear caused by the bearish economic forces you mention, has kept the market from moving up the past two years. Two of those factors appear to be mitigated at this time. First, the housing market is not crashing (see above). Second, the U.S. economy seems to be handling the increased cost of commodities and oil fairly well. The market did not get spooked by $70+ per barrel oil. As a result, the Dow has now broken resistence at 11,000, and probably will be at more than 12,000 by the end of the year. Even today, the market is acting well following one of its best days in quite some time.

Yes, the Australia, Japan, South Korea and India exchange traded funds (ETF's)have all had great returns. However, you can hit some of these stocks in the NYSE/Nasdaq/AMEX. Why buy the Australia ETF when you can own Rinker and BHP? In Japan, you can own Toyota, Sony and Matsushita. In India, you can own INFY, SAY and TTM (love that Tata Motors!). The South Korea ETF only makes sense, because its damn near impossible to buy SamSung stock in the U.S. ETF's can carry a lot of mediocre stocks in addition to these giants.

Doubtful you would see that kind of sell-off tomorrow. The U.S. economy is strong and first quarter earnings have been great. The only downside has been high energy/commodity prices which suggest inflation and the federal reserve's interest rate tightening cycle. Well, oil now is over $72 a barrel, inflation is tame (today's PPI was steady) and, most importantly, the minutes from the federal reserve indicate there may only be 1 more raise of the interest rates. In fact, the San Francisco board member stated that the federal reserve has already tightened too much. And BTW, I don't mind high energy prices as 20% of my portfolio is in energy. Shrub can threaten to nuke Iran all he wants . . . it just makes me more $$$.

It's been a good year. My portfolio is up 50% since January 1. Hence, I will be splurging when I hit Pattaya next week. However, it should be noted that the Dow and Nasdaq indexes are extremely poor indicators of the health of the U.S. economy. I mean, who is stupid enough to be holding stock in GM, Microsoft and Coke? These are dinosaurs. A better indicator is the Russell 2000 which was up 2.73% today. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5ERUT&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c= (small caps are where the growth is at, don't own your daddy's stocks).

Man Dunned for $218 Trillion USD Phone Bill. Malaysian man said he nearly fainted when he recieved a US$218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up within 10 days or face prosecution, a newspaper reported Monday. Yahaya Wahab said he disconnected his late father's phone line in January after he died and settled the 84 ringgit (US$23; euro18.88) bill, the New Straits Times reported. But Telekom Malaysia later sent him a 806,400,000,000,000.01 ringgit (US$218 trillion; euro179 trillion) bill for recent telephone calls along with orders to settle within 10 days or face legal proceedings, the newspaper reported. It wasn't clear whether the bill was a mistake, or if Yahaya's father's phone line was used illegally after after his death. ``If the company wants to seek legal action as mentioned in the letter, I'm ready to face it,'' the paper quoted Yahaya as saying. ``In fact, I can't wait to face it,'' he said. Yahaya, from northern Kedah state, received a notice from the company's debt-collection agency in early April, the paper said. Yahaya said he nearly fainted when he saw the new bill. Government-linked Telekom Malaysia Bhd. is the country's largest telecommunications company. A company official, who declined to be identified as she was not authorized to speak to the media, said Telekom Malaysia was aware of Yahaya's case and would address it. She did not provide further details. Yes, this a true story. http://goldsea.com/Asiagate/604/10phone.html

From west coast, I will always take Evergreen Deluxe unless it is full. Economy for a 13 hour flight is a long, uncomfortable journey. I paid $1000 USD with all fees for my next flight. Less than $200 more than economy. It just makes sense. Wheels up in 12 days.