teelack

That market has gone. It did however re-open in a more sophisticated form about 100 metres South on the left (as you head back into town) and can be seen from Second Road. This is of course if they haven't moved elsewhere recently! While you are in the area can I suggest that you make a visit to the 'shop' behind Big C which is another 100 metres South/ Head up either of the sois that run alongside the Big C and on the road at the rear you will not miss the place. Its gigantic and has everything that you might ever need in life.

What a great lesson to us less than phone savvy people. I did recently mention that the rate on a booking site was a great deal less than on the hotels own booking site and I guess your experience underlines the fact that in this day and age rocking up to reception and expecting a great deal is a thing of the past.

A guy goes into the postal service to apply for a job. The interviewer asks him, "Are you allergic to anything?" He replies, "Yes, caffeine. I can't drink coffee." "OK, have you ever been in the military service?" "Yes," he says, "I was in Afghanistan for one tour." The interviewer says, "that will give you 5 extra points toward employment." Then he asks, "Are you disabled in any way?" The guy says, "yes. A bomb exploded near me and I lost both my testicles." The interviewer grimaces and then says, "disabled in your country's service! Well that qualifies for extra bonus points. Okay. Looking at the regulations you have got enough points for me to hire you right now. Our normal hours are from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. You can start tomorrow at 10:00 am, and plan on starting at 10:00 AM every day." The guy is puzzled and asks, "if the work hours are from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM , why don't you want me here until 10:00 AM ?" "This is a government job ," the interviewer says. "For the first two hours, we just stand around drinking coffee and scratching our balls. No point in you coming in for that."

This question is a good example of when you need to swallow your pride and ask your GP based on your actual physical condition. I would go as far as to say that it is bloody stupid to pose questions such as this on a forum like this. The other thing is that you simply dont know in Thailand if you have the real thing or some rat poison. I have no issues discussing ED issues with my GP and they can not only offer good advice but also give you samples of various types to see what best suits.

Thanks Jacko. I often see messages with offers pop up on the screen and this list was worth printing out and also keeping a copy on the laptop.

As I reported in a recent trip report keep an eye out for the annoying bloody tailors ignoring you because they are busy on their mobiles. Suggest that you ignore these guys as obviously they are not hungry enough.

Billions. I have corrected the red neg that someone gave you. They might not like the sentiment but you do (IMHO) the board a service by taking the photo and publishing it here. Whenever I am in Pattaya I see tee-shirts that I would neither wear in Thailand or indeed any other place. Someone on this board was asking recently where they could get a tee-shirt printed and I suggested the place in Third Road almost opposite the Bliss BJ place. This place has stuff that is totally outrageous but I really don't care as I don't buy them. Whilst not on the same scale for instance the common shirt with "No money no honey" is in essence suggesting that the girls are all prostitutes. This must upset all those shop,office, nursing and bank girls for instance who are not up for sale. The interesting thing to me is that there must be a demand for this type of shirt as I imagine that this is not a one off special.

Whilst I am 10,000 KM from Pattaya the place is still in the back of my mind. Despite waking up with a hangover from a drunken evening around the outdoor fire I got motivated this morning. I need to think NOW about getting my garden into order and spray the weeds so that the place doesn't look derelict during my absence. I need to get space sorted for the millions of leaves that fall onto my property and constantly need tidying up. I also have two new pairs of walking shoes and I will be out later running them in before departure date. I am getting a bit annoyed that the plumber hasnt got back to me as I need work done on the system before I go and as I dont want to piss off the house sitter by having blocked toilets and leaky pipes. The weather is however so good at the moment and I can see tomorrow as being a beach day again. Thee place that I love is usually deserted but there was a shipwreck there in the 1870's. I have found all sorts from it from ships timber to perhaps over 3000 pieces of sand polished glass which I turn into art projects along with shells, stone and wood bought home from the beach. I am sure to some that this sounds boring but to me its a good use of great weather, fresh air, exercise and then when it rains, as it will, I will catch up on the dozens of indoor projects that I need to complete before the next 'wheels up'.

An hour ago I decided to alter a booking I had made for June when I am travelling to Chang Mai. I decided to add to my booking by purchasing the breakfast in with my room rate. It is quite a saving but more to the point I want a reason to get my lazy ass out of bed in the mornings and get out and about. I booked with Expedia and the great thing about this place is that the bookings can always be done toll free and in person with a real live agent. The initial booking was great and the change was just as good. All in all an excellent experience and all charged in my local currency. Within a minute or two the revised itinerary was on my computer awaiting a print job and transfer to some other email accounts for safe keeping. I like the toll free, live person and local currency option and can recommend Expedia.

This subject reminds me of an issue that I have and I wonder if anyone has an answer. Last time heading to Thailand I ordered a cab (Mr T by the way) and did not get a response. I ended up sending three emails and then through the help of a friend was told that he had repeatedly been responding. I was puzzled but said friend suggested that I try the Spam folder. Thing is I have a "Junk Mail' folder (on this notebook) and the confirmation wasn't in there. I also have a newish laptop and looked in there and it has both Junk and Spam and there were the confirmation emails as I had been advised. Besides feeling something of a dingbat I wonder where I went wrong. I always thought that Junk and Spam were the same thing but perhaps not but it has left me rather confused. Any thoughts or suggestions please?

....and of course those pesky apostrophe's. They can trip up journalists and reporters as well as us common mortals--as I often read in the newspapers.

I look for reasons to change from my usual airport to Pattaya taxi. I fail to see any reason to change.

I have had the same number in Thailand for some while now but I only use the phone for calls and SMS. I recall maybe a couple of years ago having one of those cheap data plans and within an hour or two all my credit had been sucked out of my phone on a trip into Walking Street! At home I simply buy a monthly 'combo' that gives me minutes, SMS and data. Easy stuff. In Thailand I have an AIS, 1-2 Call number. What I would like is some data while I am in the country. I have never bothered in the past but would like to do more travelling around the place and I believe using Google Maps or something like it would be a great help to finding places and my way around. Can anyone please explain how I add data to my prepaid AIS account so that I am only buying what I need for a holiday? I also guess that I need to constantly switch off my mobile data while I am on the move to stop it logging into every free site that I pass. Can you please un-confuse me on this issue.

Thanks to all for sharing the lunacy that we call the English language. Very entertaining.

Back to the topic. For the first time in forever there are return fares available from NZ to Bangkok return.at roughly 21400 baht equivalent. Bearing in mind that my exchange rate is crap at the moment this is a brilliant price. The bad news however is that this is with Qantas. Its OK if the flights are Emirate code share but still I am scared off from my recent experience with them. On the same basis I have booked with Thai Air and on the same exchange formula this, a direct flight is approx 28000 baht.

Well all I can say is that I hope that you are taking Russian language lessons or you will have no one to talk with! One of the changes that I have made in the last couple of years in Pattaya is to do bit of 'Pre Loading'in that I never would drink until it was going out time at night. I do however admit that since moving to the Soi Buakhao area there are so many places to drink on the cheap. Don''t get me wrong. I am not drinking to get drunk but I have discovered the joys of watching the Pattaya circus at sunset, motor cycle madness, chatting up the girls on their way to work and just getting a gentle buzz on. IMHO this is a lot better than sitting outside a 7/11

I have mentioned this before but it is a handy tip. If you want to keep your number and want a long term top up go to the AIS office in Central Plaza. Talk to the nice lady and she will show you how to use the top up machine. For every ten baht you put in you can extend the life of your sim by one month. I think that in May I extended till October.

The really frustrating thing about FX rates is the Thai baht. In the last few days the NZ Dollar has broken records against the Australian Dollar and yesterday the Euro. It is however stubbornly low against the baht. For resilience, it seems to me the baht takes a lot of beating. I like to buy baht progressively when I am at home but it really is a pain seeing all these gains against some currencies and seeing it dragging its heels against the baht.

I recently used Expedia and it was an interesting experience. I have used them in the past because they have a branch located in my home country and it makes life easier if you can phone free and chat with a local. Anyway, the price that I came up with was great and payable in my home currency without any extras and so I rang the free number. I had a good experience with the operator and happened to ask him where he was located. India! No matter, everything came through as per our conversation and I was happy with the experience. In the past I have used mainly Sawasdee and Agoda without issue. One final point. The reason for me doing the homework was because I was booking accommodation for a side trip to Chiang Mai later this year. I looked on the hotels own web site and it was horribly more expensive than using a booking agency. Go figure. Having said that I would ALWAYS look at the hotels own web site when booking. I stayed in Pattaya for years at the same hotel and used their Internet Rate and it was the best deal around. I never had to pay a deposit and usually paid at the end of the trip or sometiine half way through and when I booked out. As these were on the credit card I got quite some weeks of free credit.

I saw (in my imagination) another headline> INDIAN LOSES MOTOR-BIKE. An Indian visitor to Pattaya reported to the police that possibly the only gold plated motor bike in the world was robbed off him at 3 am this morning. Worth as much as a million baht the owner complained that before the price of gold fell it was worth almost two million baht. Enquiries continue.

As usual I look forward to your monthlies, or perhaps your periodical outpouring. . Whatever, its a bloody good read.

I rarely post in this section ut when I see wit, wisdom and old fashioned smarts I need to share! Steven Wright stuff (you’ve probably seen some???) If you're not familiar with the work of Steven Wright, he's the famous erudite (comic) scientist who once said: "I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates." His mind sees things differently than most of us do. . .. Here are some of his gems:..... 1 - I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. 2 - Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back. 3 - Half the people you know are below average. 4 - 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name. 5 - 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 6 - A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good. 7 - A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. 8 - If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain. 9 - All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand. 10 - The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 11 - I almost had a psychic girlfriend, ..... But she left me before we met. 12 - OK, so what's the speed of dark? 13 - How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink? 14 - If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. 15 - Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. 16 - When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane. 17 - Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy. 18 - Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now. 19 - I intend to live forever ... So far, so good. 20 - If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? 21 - Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. 22 - What happens if you get scared half to death twice? 23 - My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder." 24 - Why do psychics have to ask you for your name? 25 - If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. 26 - A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. 27 - Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. 28 - The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread. 29 - To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. 30 - The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. 31 - The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up. 32 - The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it. 33 - Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film. 34 - If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you. And the all-time favorite - 35 - If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work? Email sent using Optus Webmail

I am unsure if violence is on the increase or not but I feel as safe at night as I always have. I am a committed night owl and am rarely back in my room till well after three am and honestly say that I have never had an issue with any of the locals. I actually feel more threatened by some of the poorly mannered tourists than the locals. Some of their activities and language is completely out of order at times.

There was a story I think in the Bangkok Post or Pattaya paper last month about an organised crack down on beggars. I recall this in that there is a guy with very few limbs who stations himself in the area of the Bamboo Bar and he was still begging so I figured it was words rather than action.

Good stuff there. It really has been too long since I was in Bangkok for more that a day. As a matter of interest where is the London styled shopping centre? Its all new to me. Thanks for sharing.