jackcorbett

Thanks for everyone's replies and votes. As I originally posted, I was not at all sure where the picture was taken from. Now I am 100 percent sure. It is in the Sattahip area. In fact I could ride my motorbike there and no doubt find the exact spot the picture was taken. In fact I think I have been within 100 to 200 meters from the spot. That's 100 percent, not 99 percent. There is a riddle or mystery behind this one. Perhaps I'll tell it one day in a book. Bulfrog....your comment about the shirt sleeves is dead on. It's one of the first things I noticed on analyzing the picture. My Norwegian Coast guard pal also said...rivers in northern Thailand are brown, never blue. The waters in that picture are blue. And the photographer had to be in either Chiang Rai or Sattahip, certainly not Phuket or Krabi and so on. But that's part of the riddle I've unraveled.

On the contrary........and do keep in mind that when I started this poll I didn't know the answers myself and that's why I started it.....to get help from the rest of you. I distinctly recall coming back from Sattahip on my motorbike, seeing a scene in the distance where the land mass continues way off to the West (left in the picture). Far more than I would have ever expected and far off I could see the Jomtien skyline. I believe this might have been Bon Serae. Ok........Recently I've seen pictures of the Chiang Rai area and there's mountains or large hills all around you. The area in this picture is flat. Also.....one of my pals pointed out to me that rivers up North including the CHiang Rai area are brown in color. The sea is blue he pointed out. Also he pointed out to me in that picture that the sea appears off to the left in this picture without a hint of any shoreline whatsoever. This friend is an ex ship captain in the Norwegian Coast guard and he's now a chief inspector in the Coast Guard so I consider him an expert on the sea.

Here is the question. Was this picture taken near Sattahip right before New Year's Eve or was it taken near Chiang Rai. I've never been to Chiang Rai although I've been to Chiang Mai. I did not take the picture. So I don't know the correct answer myself. However........the reason I've started this pole is not just fun and games. Basically I am asking everyone here who would like to participate to play private detective. I lean towards this being near Sattahip. There is for one thing a place along the coast before you get there called Bon Serai. I've been there and there are big similarities in this picture from what I've seen before. Also....I think Chiang Rai is a bit cold and I'm thinking not many Thais are in their shirt sleeves. But at least a couple are in the picture. I believe there is a river near or in Chiang Rai. This could be along the banks of that river but upon close scrutiny it appears the channel of water is narrow towards the right of the picture and that this channel progressively widens as your eye wanders from right to left in the picture. Ultimately it appears as if there is open ocean way off to the left. I recollect a point that goes far off to the left, farther than you would expect along this portion of the coast and on a clear day you can see part of the Jomtien skyline over that point. there is no ocean near Chiang Rai. And I would expect a river to be somewhat uniform in its width and to be not very wide. But I'm not sure of any of this. That's why I am asking everyone else.

Here's the picture. http://www.alphapro.com/showcase/beach.JPG Where was this taken? In the Chiang Rai area or in the Sattahip area not that far from Pattaya? Also, what are the reasons for your choice?

My pal Ross just stayed two months at a place just up the street from me for 6000 baht per month. This is a new place and it's kept spotless. Its wireless Internet service worked out pretty well for him although he did have to pay a little extra to be able to access it, for his electric and his cable t.v. all of which still kept his total monthly bill to less than 8000 baht per month. We tested the wireless there with both our laptops before he moved in. There are five floors there and they have two wireless access points per floor with each one being close to the end of the floor. If you stayed in the very center of any floor your signal would be the weakest with the strongest at either end. Regarding Alan's comment about TOT and TTNT, here at Wongamat Residence all condo units are billed 130 baht per month for Internet service. This is to spread the cost for our common internet service from TOT over the 60 units including the shops. It can and sometimes does reach and even exceed 1000 kps. But the service is pretty unreliable. For this reason I bought an additional line in my condo with TTNT for which I pay 1200 baht per month. It started off at 256 kps download but a few months ago TTNT speeded it up to 512. It is definitely more reliable than what my fellow co-owners have but even it will go down, but when it does all I have to do is to switch lines and change my ip settings which takes just a couple of minutes. Total setup for this including modem was 8000 baht however. Recently a couple of my fellow co-owners complained to me about having to do without internet service for several days in a row. This experience used to be quite common for me. OUr building had tried two different internet suppliers before with equally dismal results. I told these two co-owners what I had done and that I had paid 8000 baht up front for the new service from TTNT, and that I had thoroughly tested the comparative speeds of the old service versus the new with the new much more expensive service (for me) averaging speeds four times faster. But these two co-owners had mumbled something about doing likewise (someday). So here they were recently complaining to me. I suppose they expected to get comparable performance to what I'm getting for 1200 baht per month for the measly 130 baht per month they are currently paying.

You will remember the Tourist Police Station next door. That's where the new Skytop is so everything's the same for you. Sling shot range of Soi Six, etc..etc.

I never had a problem either while driving my scooter as I simply zigzagged around the poor guys and gals in their cars and on the baht taxis as they sat there marooned in all that traffic. And zigging and zagging was completely necessary because all those practically immobile vehicles were surely not a product of my imagination., and not once, but many times.

What happens when you take a six lane interstate highway in the U.S. and for even the shortest stretch reduce the flow of traffic to merely one lane due to road construction? Does the traffic slow down for just 100 yards or does it back up for miles? Well, if the highway is very busy it's going to back up for miles, and that's a fact. Same same here. There's a lot of traffic going to and from Jomtien, but it's much worse at certain times of the day than it is at other times. There's just one main route to Jomtien in this area and the main choke point consists of a two lane road crossing another two lane road. As busy as Pattaya and Jomtien are getting two lane roads just don't get it and when you have choke points such as this one on the main route there are two ways of dealing with the situation. 1. You can be an ostrich with its head in the sand and ignore your long journeys or 2. Bring a Thai girl along with you and make out with her on the way.

I think that's a very valid point, Alan. Unless Pete's changed the situation concerning the safes, yes....they can be moved to another room. Or for that matter, one could have an accomplice or two on the ground beneath a room's balcony and lower the safe by a bed sheet, rope or whatever. Now first off, I'm not all that familiar with the new Skytop. With the old one there was a problem with the roof that would have not allowed that although one could manage if from the South side facing the beer bars. So it's onto the robbery situation number 2 where one moves a safe to a nearby room. One still has to get it out of Skytop. Off a balcony or right through the front or rear door. So let's imagine this picture. A girl comes walking down the staircase carrying a safe, or say she's got her Thai boyfriend carrying it down after she's let him in the front door. And I'm coming in late at night. And this is after the girl at the desk has left for the evening. I"m going to be ramming somebody right up against the wall while screaming my head off. And if it's a guy I'm going to be ramming him into that wall very hard with special attention to his head if I can get at it. Chances are I'm going to be a lot stronger than the Thai guy and even if he's a Kick boxing expert I doubt if it's going to do him much good while he's carrying the safe and particularly if he's got his feet planted on the steps. The steps are not a good platform to deliver kicks from. I think that would be a scary prospect for the happy Thai couple. Now if there's more than one Thai guy involved that might be another thing. Still....the girl probably has to let them all in from the front entrance and that's right on 2nd Road. STill........attaching the safe's to something in the room would represent improvement. I'll mention it to Pete. However, just over a year ago, the tourist police station was right next to Skytop (the tourist police station is in fact the new Sky-top). This little detail means there were far softer targets for gangs of thieves than Skytop.

So what do we do about someone like Leo? Leo used to be the bouncer at the Platinum Club in East St. Louis. Once, the General Manager, asked me to go over to Leo's house to shoot a video of him working out because he was interested in helping Leo get a little exposure that might help him get into professional fighting---perhaps "Professional wrestling" of some form or another. So I went over to Leo's house in St. Louis with my Nikon D-1 X and a video camera and got some shots of Leo with his family (They were all from Yugoslavia). They had an external two car garage that they had converted to a full scale exercise room with the weights, the heavy bag, the speed bags, and other styles of striking bags. Anyway, as I videoed Leo he lifted a few weights before moving onto the heavy bag and other striking bags. He'd hit the heavy bag with his fists and then he'd throw punches at it with his feet showing he was a good boxer and had been also trained in some martial arts. Well here's he thing about Leo. He weighed 375 pounds and he was six foot seven. And for a big man he was pretty quick. So I then put the punching gloves on and did a little sparring with Leo while his father shot some video of us. I got a couple jabs in on him and then he simply moved in on me, backing me up against the garage door within a few seconds. He was so big I couldn't move around him and I couldn't get to his chin very well either. He was just this huge colossus that I couldn't escape from and that I couldn't imagine stopping no matter what I'd do. Thankfully we were only playing. But let me tell you, sparring with Leo was about like trying to fight a King Kong that had been trained proficiently in the martial arts.

Many thanks, Top Cat. You are a fair minded guy. Besides....we don't even know the exact circumstances about anyone...that is what goes on behind closed doors. Back in the U.S. a doctor friend of mine slept in separate rooms away from his wife. They had not had sex together for years. I should call him to invite him to Pattaya. An English pal of mine never has sex with his wife because she no longer wants it with anyone, but he still pays all her bills, while he stays in Pattaya for extended periods of time. So she's got a life of her own while he pays the rent and the other bills, but he doesn't get any of the things that I get from my TG....eg. sex, a smiling face to go to bed with at night, someone who makes my coffee in the morning, does the shopping, cleaning, cooks my meals (when I'm not taking her out to dinner). So he's got a Thai gf staying with him when he's in Pattaya and she treats him about like my gf treats me. I'd say at 64 he's entitled to all of this but if I asked one of my sisters, she'd call him a S.O.B.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Other than this, what does all of the above have to do with the subject matter of the original post?

Attention Tom. Two T's (Tit for Tat). Secondly, your first statement is argumentative as it seeks to minimize the person you are trying to criticize while focusing attention away from the issues or points he's made. Lastly, you have not dealt with these issues or points whatsoever. If this were part of a term paper or a law school brief, I'd have to give you an F double minus. But you are in luck. It's not.

Tom.....I would not stay at Residence Garden or for that matter anywhere other than where I'm at. I own the condo I'm living in so I cannot offer to anyone here a treatise on what staying at Residence Garden is like. But here's what I do offer. And to quote you again, ""And the last time you actually stayed on Thappraya Rd is?" Well try this out for size. Within ONE HALF HOUR of my last post here, which was this morning I was on my motorbike passing Residence Garden. I was on my way to do my 90 day report to Immigration for my retirement visa. Traffic on Beach Road going to South Pattaya Road was extremely light. And it wasn't all that bad even in the vicinity of RG. However, it did slow up noticeably but due to the overall lightness of the traffic today, at this time, there wasn't really a problem. I had my girlfriend driving the bike so I could really be attentive and study the situation. First......the point at which the two roads coincide to form the choke point I have talked about and indicated on the map is comprised of two two lane roads coming together. The road continues as two lanes for some time. Two lanes for a major road in a city as large as Pattaya is nearly medieval in its antiquity. And this is the main road to Jomtien so the congestion here caused by all that traffic to move down not just two lanes but also by the two roads converging together is stupefying. Third road traffic coming into one's route just South of RG can be another choke point. So there you have it, Tom, I've walked the walk and today we motorbiked the route. Oh, and one more thing, on the way back we drove past Skytop on 2nd Road. I think it's four lanes of traffic going one way past there with a 5th lane as a baht taxi lane where the baht buses often travel against the normal flow of traffic. Comparing five lanes to two is like comparing apples to oranges. Really, only a brontosaurus with its head in the sand in a state of complete denial would further dispute all of this further.

Not so sure about that one either, Casper. Right after that fight in college I had a lot of pain in my hand and my knuckles were scraped raw, but man, that felt so good. My ears were ringing too and I had pain in my head, but I went to a nearby bar with some friends and reveled over what I had done to the other guy. The young man was a complete ass and so were his buddies and it just felt so good after destroying him. as I started to feel the pain in various places of my body. Key word here is after.

As Big D just pointed out, there is a light down at Central Road at Tops which spells relief. But my map shows the real story at Residence Garden. That's the major choke point I've high lighted. It is here where the street converges with another one, the street that becomes 2nd Road. Here two lines of traffic come together with one or more vehicles from one street having to let other vehicles from the other street go ahead of them. The piling up of vehicles in this area caused by this choke point is relentless and tedious. This is simple bad news. If you are walking to the Convenience store just North of RG you can't just walk there like you can from Skytop to the nearby Seven Eleven which is on the same street as Skytop. You must cross the street to get to it. If you are even on a motorbike and you are wanting to go practically anywhere in Pattaya and you are leaving RG you must once again cross to the other side of the street so you are in the left lane of traffic heading North. This location can often be a real nightmare.

That never worked on me. I got slammed in the head outside a bar when I was a Junior in College. Long story but the guy was substantially bigger than me and his punch actually punctured my ear drum. I wound up knocking him down, and had the police not arrived after which I was pulled off him, he would have been seriously injured. Second time it happened was in a country bar in Central Illinois. The guy got the first punch, a surprise punch in, and I knocked him down. Third time that happened, the bouncer of a titty bar threw me up against a door and punched me solidly in the face. In short order he wound up on the floor after I knocked him down and it took three guys to pull me off of him. He lost three teeth on that floor. Aside from fighting with the gloves on and quite a few fights in grade school, Junior High and High School that's it as an adult. But the funny thing is, even though I had trained on speed bags and the like and did a fair amount of amateur sparing, when I was in a real fight I would lose all memory of actually knocking the other guy down. I'd just go berserk and pretty much forget about all the nuances of the boxing skills I had picked up and the whole thing would be over in three to fifteen seconds or so. Later I'd ask everyone, how did that guy wind up on the floor? Did he slip?

Each to his own, but I will often do long walks with a Norwegian pal and we will walk all the way from Naklua to a position just shy of Residence Garden but sometimes past Residence Garden and back. Needless to say we are hoofing it and we are both very familiar with Residence Garden's location. Here is what Per had to say about the place. He used to say there often but that was a few years ago. "It used to cost 800 baht and that was worth it," Per told me, while we were actually walking together within 600 meters of Residence Garden just last week. "But each year it got higher and higher and it got so noisy and dirty with the dirt coming in from the road. And you can't even cross the street to get a taxi hardly sometimes, the traffic is so bad.' From the web site I find RG's rate is 1400 baht for members of this forum so I suppose that's a good rate as the RG's web site posts significantly higher rates. But if you like the place, fine. But short of going to deluxe hotels such as the Long Beach and even pricier places, RG is on the upper end of the scale. As for the location, we walk the route so we should know. But I will let my map be the guide for anyone who's really interested. I think it's objective enough.

Shortest distance between two points is from the hand to the head, not the foot to the head. Pure physics. And if you have the speed to get the punch in there and you have the power, it's over.

Point well taken. Ich sprechen ze Deutsch eine bichen. Wish I had formally taken German instead of French in school. But oh well. Have picked up a little here and there. At least enough to get the guys laughing.

Most of them in these parts speak English. And the more I'm around them, the more I respect them, although not all by any means. And even my English pals living in my condo will admit that in the bars in this area there simply are not the number of fights you will find in Central Pattaya, particularly around Sois 7 and 8 which have a large percentage of English visitors. These same pals tell me that they don't even feel at home in the pubs back in the U.K. due to the younger guys trying to pick fights at every opportunity. So I really don't mind living in an area that has more than its share of Germans.

Tom....What is your problem? Are you afraid to meet up with Big D and me at Skytop. Well don't worry. We weren't going to hurt you. We were going to buy you a beer.

Not so sure Big D will be here in February and in late February I'm headed to Vietnam. Hey...what's the big deal? We'd like to see you in December. Consider it a Christmas present to us. We will wait for you to take your measure.

So let's do it in December when Big D's here. Right in the mouth of the volcano. Beers in front of Skytop with Pete as our bartender.

Nothing wrong with that either, Tom.