RhinoTusk

Yeah, they used to have this painted on the wall at Doll House, as a message to the new girls I guess.

Charles Bronson

Donald Sutherland ...drinking wine and eating cheese, and catching some rays, you know. 👍

Marlowe

I've had intermittent problems the past couple days. I always post from within Thailand and never use a VPN.

Grand Prix

We need something like this in the USA. Let people battle with water pistols and watch the gun violence plummet. The only really bad experience I had during Songkran was, while sitting on a baht bus a farang came from behind and dumped a huge bucket of ice water over me. The water was so cold I couldn't breathe for several seconds. This comes close to assault, IMHO.

The building I lived in last couple years had direct connect to the BTS/SkyWalk in Bangkok. I could restrict my exposure to Songkran by avoiding street level, water guns aren't allowed on the BTS. I took these photos last year overlooking Soi 8.

The Magic Christian

Robert Duvall

From the Pixxie Facebook account

Yeah and the kid in the Santa hat at the bottom of the photo was waving at me.😊 Like Issan, no beach in Chanthaburi, just a river.

It was very good but I don't think much of the audience understood the lyrics.

Christmas Day I went over to Central Mall for the free entertainment. They were singing Christmas songs and dancing to Christmas music, and most of the presentation was in English. I glanced into the crowd, curious to count how many farang I could see, and I counted three. After awhile, I was in need of some liquid refreshment and headed over to the beer garden, but when I was ready to return for the featured performer there were so many people I couldn't get close to the stage. The headliner was Pixxie. A pixie is a mythical creature of British folklore known to cause mischief in flower gardens. The injection of the double XX represents the chromosome which identifies the female sex. The lead singer was born in Chanthaburi but the other girls come from Bangkok and Chaing Mai, respectively. This isn't a local band, I found some videos on YouTube, this has over 2 million views.

I lived in this town for 8 years when I worked in the gemstone industry. Chanthaburi has one of the largest gemstone markets in the world, so the town has an international business presence, yet very few tourists visit here. The language barrier is a burden, but people are more 'down to earth'. One welcome new addition since my last visit is Central Mall. There's a beer garden with live music, I'm going there tomorrow to see Pixxie, will post an update, other nights I hang out at the Koff House. Despite few farang living here, you'll see Santa and Christmas trees everywhere at this time of year. Merry Christmas!